Rural Post Offices To Provide E-Services: Ravi Shankar Prasad

"We expect to get the RBI nod by July. With 1,54,000 post offices the new initiative will usher in a financial revolution across the country," he said.

Hailing the services by the postal department, Prasad said it has done a business of 500 crores in the year in e-commerce besides opening over 52 lakh accounts under the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojna receiving over 1,000 in deposits.

"Whatever, be the decline in services, people still respect the Indian Railways and the postal services. I urge you all to build upon that respect and contribute towards the growth of the country," said Prasad, urging the employees to contribute towards the government's initiative to modernise the postal department.

Prasad also said state-run was also BSNL on the road to recovery.

"Now BSNL is running into losses in excess of 8,000 crores. But in 2004, it earned a profit of 10,000 crores. So we decided to revive it... BSNL already has added 4,70,000 new customers and its revenue has risen by 2 percent," he said.

The minister also said there would be 100 crores mobile connections in the country in next few years.

"In a country with a population of 125 crores, we now nearly 101 crores phone connections of which 98 crores are mobile phones. In the coming few years, we will have over 100 crores mobile phone connectivity across the country," Prasad said.

"Studies show that a country with more broadband connections has greater impact on the GDP growth.

"So we are bringing national optical fibre network connecting over 2.5 lakh gram panchayats across the country, we are bringing in broadband revolution," he added.
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