Debate continues over charging extra for depositors passbook

Mumbai, Nov 13 (UNI) The Indian Bank Association (IBA) has approached the RBI seeking relaxation of its stipulation, urging that the banks should be allowed to charge fee for the issuance of the depositors' passbook.

An IBA official told UNI on condition of anonymity that as the printing of the depositors' passbook, which has been made mandatory for all the banks through a recent circular as sent by the RBI to them, will put extra burden on the banks hence they must be allowed to charge separate amount from their account holders for the issuance of the depositors' passbooks.

Unlike the public sector banks, that have continued to issue the passbooks to all their account holders, the private sector banks are doing without it and restricting their job by issuing statement on monthly or quarterly basis.

The debate over the contentious issue of charging fee for issuance of the depositors passbook continues between those banks that have stopped issuing it and the ones that have continued to issue it to their account holders.

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had said in one of its recent circulars that passbook was a ready reckoner of transactions and therefore it had advised the banks to provide passbooks to all the savings bank account holders without charging any extra amount from the customers for the same.

However, a public sector bank official said that it doesn't cost much if ''You go for issuing the depositors' passbook''. In other sense, printing of each passbook merely costs Rs 10 which can be used by the account holders for quite a long period. Even if you go for issuing the statement, it costs a particular ampunt while sending the same information to the address of the account holder through courier, he added.

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