Monday 31 October 2011

Green Banking initiative by GOI - making online and reducing paper work

Monday 31 October, 2011.

Govt launches e-payment system

Union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee on Monday launched the e-payment system, it is a part of govt's anti corruption initiative and it will be implemented in all paid account offices of the Ministries.

The system will cover eight banks and at the end of this financial year, all the ministries will come under its ambit.
The Minister added once the system is fully operational, it will be responsible for payment of six lakh crore rupees.
Mukherjee gave the background of the e-payment evolution in the country and maintained that it will ensure greater efficiency, cost effectiveness and better delivery of money.
He said that the task force set up by the government headed by Nandan Nilkeni will work out modalities of direct transfer of cash subsidy of kerosene and fertilizers.
The e-payment system has been developed by Controller General of Accounts, Ministry of Finance in collaboration with National Informatics Centre.
Minister of State for Finance Namonarain Meena and Secretary Department of Expenditure also spoke on the occasion.
(DD-31.10)

Green banking is like a normal bank, which considers all the social and environmental/ecological factors with an aim to protect the environment and conserve natural resources.It is also called as an ethical bank or a sustainable bank. They are controlled by the same authorities but with an additional agenda toward taking care of the Earth's environment/habitats/resources.

Ideal Benefits of Green Banking:

* Basically Ethical (Green) banking avoids as much paper work as possible and rely on online/electronic transactions for processing so that you get green credit cards and green mortgages. Less paperwork means less cutting of trees.
* Creating awareness to business people about environmental and social responsibility enabling them to do a environmental friendly business practice.
* Green (Ethical) banks adopt and implement environmental standards for lending, which is really a proactive idea that would enable eco-friendly business practices which would benefit our future generations.
* When you are awarded with a loan, the interest of that loan is comparatively less with normal banks because ethical banks give more importance to environmental friendly factors - ecological gains. Natural resources conservation is also one of the underlying principles in a green bank while assessing capital/operating loans to extracting/industrial business sector.

Green Banking as a concept is a proactive and smart way of thinking with a vision for future sustainability of our only Spaceship Earth - as design science explorer Richard Buckminster Fuller called our Earth.

Though, even today in the New York Times, an article on the success/failure of green banking in US has been analyzed for green banking is making progress though its profit margins are far below than the other commercial banks. Our SBI in India has also gone with an operational segment of green banking. Green banking requires a paradigmatic change in thinking about economics, business and finance. Its success would be greater if the world governments started to revise their economic paradigms from being 'monetary economics' to 'ecological economics' and begin to transform their accounting principles from purely being financial into ecological/operational energy accounting patterns.

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