The Government of India has finally started off with the feasibility study test of its new plan to spread banking services to all parts of the country. The Government has plans to set up a specialized banking services subsidiary under the department of post.

Tenders have been invited for carrying out the feasibility study on a detailed time bound basis to check the practicability of the service. It plans to set up the Post Bank of India (PBI) which is a proposed banking subsidiary of the postal department.

"The process has been initiated to design a detailed road map on establishment of the PBI," an official in the ministry of communications and IT said.

Applications have already been invited for request for proposal (RFP) from consulting firms to prepare the road map.

The first idea of setting up PBI had arisen in 2005 by a committee which had suggested that a banking subsidiary of the department of posts be set up in the country. The proposal quoted that the PBI would provide customer friendly services and products and spread banking services to all unbanked rural and remote areas of the country.

Indian Post has 39,173 post offices in rural areas and 15,862 post offices in urban areas. The pilot study will focus on specific areas of service delivery a proposed for the PBI and would study the workability of merging these services with the existent Post Office Small Savings Schemes, postal life insurance, pension payments and money transfer services.

The total number of accounts with post offices has increased from 14.23 crore in 2003-04 to 20.50 crore in 2008-09. Over 8,000 post offices already been computerized.