Sachin Pilot (right), Indian Minister of Communication and Information Technology, and Sanjiv Arora, Indian ambassador, during the press brifing at Indian Embassy in Doha yesterday. Kammutty V P
DOHA: A visiting junior minister from India agreed to a suggestion at a news briefing here yesterday that the issue of allowing low-income Indian workers in Qatar and the rest of the GCC to have Public Provident Fund (PPF) accounts back home should be discussed by New Delhi.
Currently, only resident Indians are permitted to have PPF accounts in post offices (and some designated public sector banks) across the country.
PPF accounts carry higher interest margins, and interest income as well as the capital invested, are not subject to taxation. `70,000 (QR4,885) can be deposited in a PPF account by a holder in a financial year (April 1 to March 31).
When told that since Qatar and other GCC states have large numbers of low-paid Indians with no future financial security or access to pension schemes, so they should be allowed to open PPF accounts at home, Sachin Pilot said the suggestion was worth taking up for discussion at the government level.
Pilot, Minister of State for Communication and IT, is one of the youngest members of the Indian parliament and the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government. This is his second term in parliament.
Pilot was here leading an Indian delegation to the Universal Postal Union Conference. This was his first visit to Doha, he pointed out, addressing a news briefing with Indian ambassador, Sanjiv Arora, at the embassy premises last evening.
India Post has 155,000 branches (post offices) spread across the country and handles an incredible 260 million savings accounts, with deposits exceeding a staggering $120bn.
India Post employs 480,000 people and also covers 26 million lives through Postal life insurance. It is the biggest postal network in the world. Contrarily, there are only 90,000 bank branches in India.
Pilot said that India Post has undertaken an ambitious Technology Project which will provide integrated modular solutions for all financial and core services.
Some 130,000 rural post offices will be provided with handheld devices for multiple postal and financial operations. Postal account holders would be able to operate their account from anywhere in the country.
There are 650,000 villages in India and 940 million mobile phone users. “We must transform the lives of these people through policy-making and the use of technology,” said the visiting junior minister. India Post has applied to the county’s banking regulators for permission to provide banking services, including macro-credit, particularly to rural sections of the population.
This will ensure that large sections of the rural population, including small farmers, are brought within the banking network. There are 25 million Indians based overseas and remitted a whopping $65bn last year. India Post also handles remittances.
India’s IT sector employs some 12 to 13 million people and exports $100bn worth of services annually on average. Some 63 percent of IT exports are to the US.
“We want to diversify and have fair exposure to the Middle East as well.” Pilot said that he had discussions with top officials of ictQATAR (telecom sector regulators in Qatar) for closeer cooperation in the IT sector with Qatar.
“We have held discussion with the Qatari government to entrust high-end jobs to Indian IT companies here.” Although big Indian IT players are here, India wants the smaller ones to follow suit.
Pilot said India wants an increasing number of its companies to come to Qatar and hold discussions with prospective business partners to have a presence here. He said that despite India Post suffering losses due to the widespread use of the Internet and mobile phone SMS services, the postal network was being renovated. “No post office is being closed down. They are instead being relocated to cope with changing demography of villages,” he said in reply to a question.
The Peninsula
