Elderly, disabled people can now buy savings tools

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Arafat Ara
The government has brought the elderly and physically challenged people under the state-sponsored savings instruments scheme aiming to protect the vulnerable groups' interest and popularise the investment tools among the savers, said officials.
Internal Resources Division (IRD) last week issued a circular on bringing the two groups under the state-run Poribar Sanchaypatra scheme that is already being implemented, said an official of the Directorate of National Savings (DNS).
Earlier, only women above 18 years of age could buy the savings certificate. The rate of return for Poribar Sanchaypatra is 13.45 per cent, the highest for any government savings instrument.
The maximum limit of the savings scheme is Tk 4.5 million in each name.
Now men and women who are above 65 years and physically disabled people can buy the savings instrument, said the DNS official.
The IRD proposed to the Finance Division to introduce four new savings schemes to attract new groups of people towards savings instruments and to help lower the government's borrowing from the banking system.
The proposed new savings instruments were Sanchaypatra for elderly people, Sanchaypatra for farmers, Sanchaypatra for students and Sanchaypatra for disabled people.
Following the government decision of allowing the new two groups to buy the Poribar Sanchaypatra, the sales of the scheme will increase significantly, said the official.
Now Poribar Sanchaypatra is the best seller among the government savings instruments.
Of the total sales of the savings certificates worth Tk 189.55 billion, the DNS sold Poribar Sanchaypatra amounting to Tk 71.27 billion in the fiscal year (FY) 2011-12.
The government's internal net borrowing from the savings certificates has been proposed at Tk 74 billion in the budget for FY 2012-13.
The government's net borrowing from savings instruments stood at Tk 2.09 billion in July last against Tk 3.11 billion in the same month of FY 2011-12, DNS data showed.
Investors presently are encashing their savings instruments more compared to investing in the tools. So the net sales cannot see a healthy growth, said the official.