“Development is not only income, it has to have capacities…It has to have two things- inclusion and equity or certain minimum level of living,” Jain said at the second day of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Partnership Summit.
He said that technology is a great enabler and leveller, creates capacities and productivity, and also gives inclusivity and equity.
Emphasising on the importance of a “very” properly designed ecosystem for redressal of customer grievances, he said: “There could be a problem say 0.1% of the transactions or 0.01% but that will also add to huge number of transactions and the person who has lost the money… For you (payment banks) it may be a statistics… but the person who has lost the money, for him it is a problem,” Jain said.
At the same event, India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) MD& CEO J Venkatramu said that the bank wants to convert itself to a universal bank as the vast network of post office branches would help in achieving financial inclusion.
“Given the network of post offices, probably we fit the bill in terms of being the institution which can reach every nook and corner. If we get a full fledged banking licence, especially for financial inclusion, that will help us serve larger goals,” Venkatramu said, replying to a question on the bank approaching RBI for universal bank licence.
He said when the IPPB started operations in 2018, 80% of the transactions happened in cash. However, with technology adoption, presently only 20% of the transactions happen in cash and the rest digitally.At the same event Sumita Dawra, special secretary, DPIIT said that the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes have a budgeted investment of $26 billion from the government side in terms of incentive and it is expected to create a manufacturing ecosystem of more than $400 billion in the next few years.
“We have already started seeing very encouraging results in large scale manufacturing, electronics, food processing, pharma, telecom and white goods where investments, production, sales and employment have been impressive,” she said.
Dawra said that as a developing nation, India sees great opportunity in building supply chains and integrating with the global value chains.
“There are challenges such as Covid, geopolitical disruptions, global slowdown in growth, currency fluctuations, changes in policies of importing countries,” she said.
She also said that “good results” have started coming in on PM GatiShakti- be it the railways, planning movement of coal through both rail and ports.
“For last mile connectivity alone, in the recent most budget, 100 last mile connectivity projects which were identified on the PM GatiShakti portal have been sanctioned allocated Rs 75,000 crore,” she said.
She said the government has put together a Services Improvement Group which is inter ministerial which includes officials from customs, DGFT and all infrastructure ministries.