Dissent over the proposed move by Centre to scale down the commission of small savings agents is mounting as the agents fear that such a move would affect their livelihood besides seeing a reduction in small savings deposits being used to fund development works. Tirupur Small Savings Agents' Association (TSSAA) secretary A. Govindarajan toldThe Hindu that the recommendations of the former RBI governor Shyamala Gopinath headed committee on ‘Comprehensive review of National Small Savings Fund (NSSF)' did not take into effect the plight of five lakh agents in the country, predominantly women, who had been mopping by deposits for almost four decades. The committee in its report had recommended a reduction in the commission on recurring deposits from four per cent to one per cent over a period of three years starting 2012 and also abolishment of commission under Public Provident Fund scheme (PPF). Likewise, the committee had suggested that commission should be abolished on senior citizen savings scheme and further asked the government to bring down the commission rate to 0.5 percent in the case of other schemes under the Standardised Agency System. “The government should at least keep the commission rate intact instead of listening to the committee report as majority of the agents had been making a living solely out of the commissions for many decades ,” Mr Govindarajan pointed out. He added that the small savings agents were not given any hike in commissions during the last two decades. The Association was of the opinion that small saving deposits worth Rs. 80,000 crore had been lying idle only because that some State governments were refusing to take loans from the corpus for execution of infrastructure development projects at nine per cent interest as they were getting cheaper loans from agencies like World Bank.
The Hindu
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