UNCLAIMED DEPOSIT of 48,262 crores lying with RBI: 25.63 crore bank accounts in the country inactive for one year

How much money do you have in your bank account? You will remember this very well. There will be many of you who must have also remembered how much money is in which account. But the surprising thing is that out of the total bank accounts of the country, 35% i.e. 25.63 crore accounts are such which are lying dormant for the last year. According to the World Bank's latest Global Findex report, this number of inactive accounts is the highest in the world.

When an account remains inactive for more than 10 years, the bank hands over the amount lying in it to the RBI. This amount is deposited in the Depositors Education and Awareness (DEA) Fund of RBI. There was a total of Rs 48,262 crore in this DEA fund of RBI as on 31 March 2022. This is more than the annual budget of a small state like Manipur, Tripura, or Mizoram.

While banks are troubled by the expenditure on the maintenance of dormant accounts, the RBI is concerned that the possibility of fraud through these accounts is high and the amount lying in them can also be misused. In 2009 itself, RBI had made a guideline for dormant accounts and instructed banks to run a campaign to activate them, but the number of these accounts has increased instead of decreasing.

The World Bank believes that dormant accounts indicate that these account holders have not been able to connect with the main economic stream. This situation is even more worrying for India because on the one hand, a large part of the world's population without a bank account is in India. At the same time, account holders in India also do not use it in digital transactions. Know which accounts are inactive and how the World Bank checks the economic health of the country with these accounts.

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