STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday launched a special series of coins that are also ‘visually impaired friendly’.
The coins of Re 1, Rs 2, 5, 10 and 20 denominations will have the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav (AKAM) design are not commemorative coins and will be part of circulation.
“These new series of coins will remind people of the goal of amrit kal and motivate people to work towards the development of the country,” Modi said while addressing the iconic week celebration of the Ministry of Finance.
Modi also launched the ‘Jan Samarth portal’ — a credit-linked portal of 12 government schemes.
The Prime Minister said India has developed various financial inclusion platforms and there is a need to create awareness about them for their optimum utilisation. There should be an effort to extend these financial inclusion solutions globally, he said.
“Earlier it was the responsibility of the people to go to the government for availing benefit of the schemes. Now the emphasis is on taking governance to people and free them from the rigamarole of doing rounds of different ministries and websites…this portal will improve the lives of students, farmers, businessmen and MSME entrepreneurs, and will help them in realising their dreams,” he said. The Jan Samarth portal will be an ‘end-to-end delivery platform’ and more people will come forward to avail loans because of the ease of compliance, he said.
On the sidelines of the launch event, Bank of India MD A K Das said that this portal will help reduce turnaround time and facilitate faster sanction of loans to beneficiaries. More schemes can be onboarded as we go along, Das added.
Modi said that the government is focused on simplification in reforms. “GST has now replaced the web of many taxes at the Centre and the states. The country is also seeing the result of this simplification,” he said. Now it has become normal for the GST collection to cross Rs 1 lakh crore every month, he said, adding that there has been a constant increase in EPFO registration.
“We have shown in the last eight years that if India collectively decides to do something, then it becomes a new hope for the world. Today the world is looking at us not just as a big consumer market but with hope and confidence as a capable, game-changing, creative, innovative ecosystem,” the prime minister said.
Speaking on the occasion, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said each of these schemes will be displayed on the portal. “This portal is going to make it easy so that citizens do not have to ask the same questions every time to avail himself a government programme”.
