An agreement was signed between Department of Posts and Centurion Bank of Punjab here today to provide foreign exchange services to the public. Although the Department has full fledged money changing licence this is the first time that the Department is entering the foreign exchange market.
To start with the foreign exchange services is to be run as a pilot project covering the 31 Post Offices spread across 23 large cities, towns and villages in 11 States. The project will facilitate both the encashment of foreign exchange and transfer of money in foreign currency. While the main foreign exchange business will be operated by the Centurion Bank of Punjab, the Department of Posts officials will operationalise the scheme after training imparted by the Bank.
An agreement was signed today by Shri J. Panda of the Department of Posts and Shri Sudarshan Motwani of Centurion Bank of Punjab in the presence of Shri Anil Jaggia, Chief Operating Officer of the Bank and Shri I.M.G. Khan, Secretary, Department of Posts launching the services.
Speaking after the launch of the project Shri Anil Jaggia described this project as “one more step towards financial inclusion of our rural population”. Depending on the success of the pilot project the bank hopes to reach out this scheme to thousands of cities and towns across the country. The select Post Offices will be hubs around which the bank hopes to sensitize rural population about the liberalized foreign exchange norms.
Shri I.M.G. Khan, Secretary, Posts emphasized the initiatives taken by the Department of Posts to leverage the great strengths which lies in the network of Post Offices and the knowledge of people by postal departmental staff. He said with the induction of the new technology plan and the strengths available with the Postal Services they would be able to open up partnerships with all types of organizations which will be of great benefit to the people.
EK/SB/VK
(Release ID :36594)