After the latest Monetary Policy Review, Reserve Bank of India Governor Shaktikanta Das asked banks to use their branches effectively to mobilise deposits, highlighting the importance of brick-and-mortar structures. This comes against the backdrop of public sector banks (PSBs) seeing their branch count shrinking in the past five years mainly due to rationalisation after the mergers of several state-run lenders. Ten banks were merged into four, effective April 1, 2020. A year before that, Dena Bank and Vijaya Bank were merged into Bank of Baroda. On the other hand, private sector lenders have added over 7,000 branches in the same period, riding on the aggressive expansion by the country’s largest private sector bank, HDFC Bank.
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