Bankers Want Centre to Pay DBT Commission on Time: Chanda Kochhar

Mumbai: Bankers on Monday urged Finance Minister Arun Jaitely to release on time the commissions paid to them for Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) transactions.

"The request from the bankers would always be if we could get the DBT commission paid on time," ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar told Arun Jaitley.

Mr Jaitely was here to attend the 68th Annual General Meeting of Indian Banks' Association.

Bankers have earlier also demanded that the government should adequately compensate banks for running social schemes like Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY).

"The government wants that it (PMJDY) should be a sustainable kind of initiative... that we should not do it and then allow it to die because it is not commercially viable. So obviously, the government will have to think of ways and means to ensure that these accounts, once they come in, become commercially viable accounts," she had said last month.

Last month, Reserve Bank Governor Raghuram Rajan had also stressed on the need to compensate PSBs.

"We should recognise that PSBs undertake public interest activities (like the rollout of accounts under the PMJDY) that are not always fully compensated. Government should endeavor to keep the competitive playing field level by fully compensating banks for activities it wants undertaken in the public interest," Dr Rajan wrote in the Overview section of RBI's annual report.

Ms Kochhar also asked the minister for some clarification on use of Aadhaar card while offering overdraft facility to accounts opened under the PMJDY scheme.