SBI sources said in Kolkata that over 8,000 of its employees throughout the country will retire within this fiscal (2000-2001) - transferring a tremendous amount of workload on existing employees. This will bring down the bank's total staff strength to around two lakh by March 2001 from 2.33 lakh before the commencement of the VRS on January 15 last.

In the next 5-8 years, the SBI will face a further erosion in its staff strength because of retirement on an average of 5,000 employees each year. By 2010, all the staff recruited in the mid-60s and 80s will have to go and it will bring in tremendous workload upon existing employees, they claimed.The problem would be further compounded by the fact that the SBI was the oldest nationalised bank in the country and that most of its staff were recruited between the mid-60s and 80s as a massive expansion drive took place during that period, sources said. The bank was nationalised in 1965, slightly before other banks, they said.

"Now with almost all the staff recruited during the maximum expansion period gone within next few years there will be huge imbalance in managing over 9,000 branches and government's proposal to scrap Banking Services Recruitment Board (BSRB) has come as another major hurdle," they claimed.As the SBI and all other nationalised banks did not have the infrastructure to recruit staff on a large scale on its own, scrapping the BSRB will have a tremendous detrimental effect, sources said. If BSRB was allowed to exist, large scale recruitment would have been possible at short notice, but from the next fiscal, the same recruitment would become difficult, sources said.While on the one hand, the reduction in staff strength augurs well for the bank so far as profitability was concerned, it was likely to have a far reaching impact on the running of rural and semi-rural branches, officials said.

They claimed that rural and semi-rural branches of SBI contribute up to 70 per cent to its total deposit base of about Rs 2,00,000 crore.Sources said that unless there was large scale recruitment, the manning of these branches would become difficult and consequently, profitability would suffer. "Deposits will suffer if these branches are closed," they said.The State Bank of India has over 20 regional offices and zonal offices, the drastic reduction in manpower because of retirement will force merger or closure of rural branches because regional or zonal offices will have to be run with adequate staff, sources said. Though the bank was sure to recruit people at higher levels, large scale recruitment of clerical staff would be difficult due to a lack of infrastructure. Under these circumstances, the BSRB could have been of immense help, they claimed.