Jayant Sinha launches Nabard’s digitisation scheme for SHGs

With an objective to promote financial inclusion, Nabard today started a pilot project for complete digitisation of women self help groups (SHGs) to improve the quality of interface between members and banks for efficient and hassle free delivery of banking services.

The programme was launched by Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha at Ramgarh in Jharkhand.

Appreciating the initiative of National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (Nabard), Sinha emphasised the need for higher coverage of women under Prime Minister Jan Dhan Yojana and hoped this will set the architecture for wider participation of women. 

Nabard has taken this proactive step to address issues and constraints faced by different stakeholders of the SHG bank linkage programme (SHG-BLP), such as need for improving the quality of interface between SHG members and banks, timely credit linkage of SHGs, challenges in book keeping by low literate clients and convergence with pro poor government programmes, Nabard chairman Harsh Kumar Bhanwala said. “The project will benefit various stakeholders. It will facilitate mainstreaming of SHG members with Aadhar based financial inclusion and Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) enabling access to wide range of financial services,” he said.

Digitisation will bring transparency, credibility to operations of SHGs through inbuilt grading MIS and thereby increasing the comfort of bankers in credit appraisal, disbursement and monitoring, he added.