The Post Office has opened nearly 1.8 lakh accounts but banks are still awaiting guidelines.

Nearly two months after the Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana was launched, bank branches are still awaiting guidelines on the small savings scheme for girls. Sukanya accounts can be opened in post offices and designated banks. While post offices have witnessed a deluge of investors and opened close to 1.8 lakh accounts in the past two months, banks remain clueless about the scheme.

Two weeks ago, the RBI sent a circular to the heads of 28 commercial banks spelling out the operational guidelines of the Sukanya scheme, but the information is yet to percolate down to the branch level. There is no such investment scheme. Are you sure you got the name right. For investors, the tardiness of the banks could mean a lost opportunity. One can invest a maximum of `1.5 lakh in a Sukanya account in a financial year. With barely a week left in 2014-15, the win dow of opportunity is growing smaller by the day. The worst affected are parents whose daughters are more than seven years old. The Sukanya scheme allows investments for only 14 years and the scheme matures when the girl is 21. If they don't invest in 2014-15, their investment period will be 13 years.

Investors can open an account in a post office, but that would mean getting stuck with it for the rest of the term. Though Sukanya accounts are portable, one can't shift from the post office to a bank.