CHENNAI: Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa urged bankers to double their efforts to make Tamil Nadu the number one ranked State in the financial inclusion index in India. Speaking on the occasion to mark the special Platinum Jubilee celebrations of Indian Overseas Bank and launch of bank’s schemes on Friday, Jayalalithaa also urged the bankers to ensure that every village in the State was provided with a banking connection.Ruing the fact that India had one-sixth of the 2.5 billion un-banked adults in the world, she said, internationally, countries with large proportion of the population excluded from the formal financial system showed higher poverty ratios and higher inequality.“The main instrument for sustainable and inclusive growth is employment and access to credit which in turn contributes to self-employment and poverty reduction. The fact that only 9.9 per cent of households in India have credit accounts underlines the scope for greater expansion of credit linkages,” she said.Urging banks to leverage technology to reach out to people, she said the crucial dimension of financial inclusion, which her government welcomed, was the participation of banks in payment mechanism. She said the government would like to ensure that all social security pensions were disbursed through banks.
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