In the financial year 2022, there has been a big reduction in the number of employees along with the branches of public sector banks in the country, has been claimed by the country’s largest bank employees’ union. The All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) says that in FY 2022, 2,044 branches of the state-run bank have been closed as compared to the previous year. Along with this, the number of employees has also reduced by 13 thousand.
AIBEA says that on the one hand, there is a continuous decrease in the branches of public sector banks. On the other hand, the branches of private banks have been continuously increasing. According to the data given by AIBEA, in the financial year 2022, 4023 branches of private banks have increased. Now the number of branches of private banks in the country has increased to 34,342 whereas the number of branches of public sector banks has come down to 86,221 during this period from 88265 last year. Earlier in the financial year 2020, this figure was beyond 90 thousand.
AIBEA said that there has been a steady decline in the number of employees of public sector banks in the last few years. In FY 2021, this figure stood at 8,07,048, which has now come down to 7,94,040. AIBEA further said that since the merger of public sector banks in 2020, many branches have been closed, due to which a large number of employees have also taken retirement.
AIBEA general secretary CH Venkatachalam said the time till FY21 for state-owned banks was challenging due to NPAs, but now the times have changed.
Increased business of public sector banks: In the report released by AIBEA, it has been said that a total of 21 public sector banks in the country have done a business of Rs 181 lakh crore in FY 2022, which was Rs 166 lakh crore in FY 2021. During this period, there has been a jump of more than 100 percent in the net profit of public sector banks and the profit has increased from Rs 331 billion to Rs 689 billion.