Banks go slow in opening rural branches

• Amid the hullabaloo surrounding financial inclusion, which is about extending banking facilities to the unbanked, recent data released by the Reserve Bank of India tell a different story. According to the data, the proportion of rural branches to the total number of branches have fallen to 38.5 per cent as on March 2014, compared to 44 per cent in March 2006
   
• Though the data is released with a one-year lag, there is no reason to believe that things have changed drastically in a year
   
• While the number of rural branches recorded compounded annual growth rate of 5 per cent, the number for urban and metro areas are much higher, at 7.5 per cent and 6.9 per cent respectively

RURAL: Centres with population of less than 10,000

SEMI-URBAN: Population of 10,000 and above but less than 100,000

URBAN: Population of 100,000 and above but less than 1 million

METROPOLITAN: Centres with population above 1 million