Syndicate Bank relaunches Pigmy collection scheme

Bangalore, Mar 1 (UNI) Public sector Syndicate Bank today relaunched its lifeline product of yesteryears, the Pigmy collection scheme, aimed at cultivating savings habit among people with low income.

Announcing this to newspersons here, Bank Chairman and Managing Director C P Swarnkar said that under the relaunched 'Pigmy Plus 2007' Daily Deposit Scheme, pigmy collectors would use hand-held collection machines to collect the savings and issue receipt on the spot. The machine could also generate various details such as customer account balance, he revealed.

He said the earlier scheme, launched in 1928, would also be in force along with the relaunched one. Together, the schemes targetted to collect around Rs 2,000 crore annually. The bank had also drawn up a plan for strengthening the pigmy agent force by adding up 1,000 new agents to the existing strength of over 3,200. To encourage the existing pigmy collectors, the bank had decided to give one per cent more incentive in addition to the existing two per cent on excess mobilisation over and above the average collection for three months.

This incentive would be in force from today till June 30, he added.

Mr Swarnkar said the depositor was expected to pay a minimum of Rs five every day and the minimum period of deposit would be 72 months. The interest accrued on the deposit on completion of 72 months would be five per cent. The scheme also had a facility to enable deposits avail 75 per cent of the outstanding balance in their account.

Explaining the other activities of the bank, he said 1,400 branches were covered under the Core Banking Solution and the number of ATMs was likely to cross 650 by the month-end. The bank targetted to cover one lakh students under the SyndVidyarthi scheme to provide educational loans. The bank had also disbursed a loan of Rs 500 crore to farmers under the SyndJaiKisan scheme to free them from the clutches of private money lenders, he added.

UNI