Government payouts towards pensions, scholarships and subsidies worth thousands of crores of rupees will be directly transferred to bank accounts of beneficiaries in 51 districts spread over 15 states from the New Year Day. Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in Pune today that the ambitious government scheme based on Aadhaar-enabled mechanism will cover the entire country by end of 2013.The scheme aims at checking pilferage.

Addressing chairman and managing directors of several leading banks at Bancon' conference, he said that there is only five weeks left now to roll out the scheme. He said the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has called a meeting on Monday to discuss issues related to direct cash transfer of subsidy. He said once the roll-out begins, the Government wants it to be completed in 600 odd districts in India. Larger number of districts will be added every quarter.

He said, the government's major subsidy bill, which include payments towards food, fertiliser and petroleum, in the current fiscal was pegged at 1.8 lakh crore rupees.

On growth, he said India is facing a difficult situation because the pace of economic expansion has declined to about 5.5 per cent in the first quarter of 2012-13. The growth in the second quarter is likely to be 5.5 per cent, he said.

Expressing confidence of passing the Banking Regulation Act as early as possible, he said he had asked the Reserve Bank to finalise the guidelines for new licences and start accepting applications pending the passing of the Bill. He said , the RBI had allowed new private banks to operate last time in 2002 and earler new players came in 1991-92. By the end of this fiscal year, the refund of tax payers for 2011-12 will be done, he said.