Policy paralysis: Postal dept incurs loses in crores

Due to the lethargic attitude of the India Post, the government might have incurred a loss of over Rs 102 crore in less than one week and is still losing money. For the past five days, post offices across the country are not taking deposits under any scheme as they are struggling to close accounts for March rush.

Millennium Post learnt that the department is still struggling to clear its old deposits, which happened during March-end. “The main reason behind this is the announcement of interest rate revision on March 17. Soon after this, post offices across the country got deposits in plenty and are busy updating those,” said an agent, who encourages customers for investing in different saving schemes of the department.

However, in case of the National Savings Certificate (NSC) and the Kisan Vikas Patra (KVP), the department is running out of papers as the Finance Ministry has put an end to physical procurement of these papers.

“As per the Ministry’s order, the post offices have to issue NSCs and KVPs in e-paper format and for that the department is upgrading its resources. Though above 22,000 post offices are Core Banking Solution-enabled, the postal department is working hard to make it available to customers soon,” a senior India Post official said.

He added deposits in NSCs and KVPs are being put on hold due to the Ministry’s order, while other deposits are happening smoothly in all post offices. 

Another agent said, “The resources in post offices are still not at par with banks and that’s why it has stopped taking deposits under any scheme. One can get payments against their deposit schemes, but cannot invest the matured amount in any other scheme, resulting in loss for the department.” 

He further said that officials would not accept deposits for another 10 days.