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: Bank branches

The statistical tables relating to banks in India, brought out by RBI last week, show that the financial crisis has impacted growth of bank branches. Growth in the total number of bank branches, which had shot up from 2,590 in 2006-07 to 3,631 in 2007-08, slowed down in 2008-09.

But this deceleration in the growth of bank branches was not uniform across geographical regions. While growth in rural and semi-urban areas increased, it decelerated in metro regions and even declined in the urban areas. While the number of bank branches added in rural areas went up from 438 in 2007-08 to 606 in 2008-09, it accelerated from 1,066 to 1,186 in semi-urban areas. The rise was only marginal in the metro areas where it went up from 877 to 896 during the period. The worst affected was the urban segment where the new branches added declined from 1,250 to 1,097 between 2007-08 and 2008-09.

The pace of growth of bank branches also differed sharply across different bank categories. Total branches added by SBI and its associate banks and nationalised banks continued to pick up, albeit marginally. In contrast, branches were added by foreign banks at a stable level. The worst hit were scheduled private sector banks where the number added declined sharply. The only segment that saw an improvement was rural banks, which doubled the number of branches in the most recent year.