Weekly news roundup - Asia, 31 March, 2008

State Bank of India plans to sell products via e-Gram telecentres

Soon State Bank of India (SBI) will provide banking services through e-Gram project, the Gujarat Government project, which aims to provide e-Governance services in villages. SBI will provide checking of account balance, deposits, loans insurance and other banking services through the Internet. With this service people from rural areas who live far away from a bank branch will be able to avail of banking products without having to personally visit the nearest branch. The bank is looking at targeting more than 5,000 rural ICT kiosks in the next one year to double up as its banking facilitator. Under the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, banks are permitted to use the services of non-governmental organisations/self-help groups, microfinance institutions and other civil society organisations as intermediaries in providing financial and banking services through the use of business facilitator and correspondent models. The initiative will enable villagers to start a bank account with deposit amount as low as INR 50. People can also maintain their account with zero balance. SBI has also signed an MoU with India Post to act as a facilitator for 50 post offices in a pilot. It has also signed up with Gujarat Agro Industries Corporation to market the bank's products in 700 outlets of the 1,200 outlets in the state.

Bangladesh to spend lowest on mobile phone in South Asia

According to recent study, conducted by LIRNEasia, Bangladeshis spend less on mobile phone use than any other people in South Asia. Bangladesh ranked No 1 in terms of affordability of cost by the low, medium and high mobile users in both prepaid and post paid, followed by Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka. According to the study, a low prepaid user means a person who talks 68 minutes per month on an average and low post paid user means a 207-minute talking time per month. In the case of medium users the study considers 175-minute and 535-minute talking time per month for prepaid and post paid customers. The study found that for high prepaid users average monthly expenditure is $12.31, followed by Pakistan's $16.92, India's $18.32 and Sri Lanka's $20.046. Afghanistan is on the top list in terms of cost that ranges from $8.33 for low user to $43.34 for higher user. In the case of post paid PPP, Bangladesh holds the lowest position at both the medium and high user level. But it has been adjudged the second ($33.83) at low user level, followed by Pakistan ($33.32).

Gujarat villages to bank on pocket-sized ATMs

Soon Gujarat (India) will have a small ATMs that could be carried anywhere in the bag. In a novel initiative to make rural banking hassle-free, public-sector, Dena Bank is gearing up to roll out these little ATMs in a couple of rural areas on experimental basis. Both public and private sector banks in Gujarat have launched a drive for 100 per cent financial inclusion by offering no-frills bank accounts to all the rural households. Taking it a step further, Dena Bank has decided to offer ATM-like transaction facility to rural populace. These tiny ATMs would come as a major relief to banking customers in rural markets.

CARE to leverage ITC’s e-Choupal telecentres in rural healthcare

Hyderabad based CARE Group of Hospitals has launched a pilot project in Maharashtra in collaboration with ITC e-Choupal telecentres to provide quality medical facilities to the country's rural heartland. The first pilot project has been launched in Nagpur, where a 100-bed multi-speciality hospital has been established. This hub is electronically linked to three smaller medical centres in Yavatmal, Wardha and Amaravati. Around 400 villages with a million populations are brought into the network. Basically, CARE Hospitals is integrating its primary healthcare delivery model with the e-Choupal network. Like e-Choupal, CARE hospitals has also roped in corporates to develop 'smart devices' to capture basic health information in electronic format, while leveraging the additional bandwidth available with the e-Choupals.

Contact Name: Vignesh

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