Investment in West Bengal's savings scheme rises following Mamata Banerjee's advice

KOLKATA: After chief minister Mamata Banerjee urged people not to invest in the chit funds, the investments in government small saving schemes have reached a record figure of Rs 900 crores during the first half of the current financial year.

In 2010-11 and 2011-12, the deficits in government saving schemes were to the tune of Rs 987 crore and Rs 165 crore respectively. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee had urged the people to invest in government small saving schemes, rather than depositing their hard-earned money with the chit funds after the multi-crore Sarada scam came to the light. Lakhs of poor and middle-class people in West Bengal had lost their hard-earned money by depositing those with Sarada Group as it's owner Sudipto Sen had failed to repay the money to the investors.

In a first-of-its-kind initiative to safeguard the savings of its people, the West Bengal government had launched a state-operated small-savings scheme for the common people on October 5. While announcing the scheme, chief minister Mamata Banerjee told that return on savings comes with guarantee from the government.

The state government had always stood beside the duped investors who lost money in chit fund scams and had taken up responsibility to compensate. A special fund of Rs 500 crore for compensation of duped investors was also created on the chief cinister`s initiative.

The campaign by Maa, Mati, Manush Government, to stay away from chit funds, has brought confidence amongst common people who have started investing their money with government schemes and as a result, investment figure in these funds has gone up recently.