Composition
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is India's central bank. Though the banking industry is currently dominated by public sector banks, numerous private and foreign banks exist.
Commercial banking system in India consists of 272 scheduled banks and four non-scheduled banks as on March 31, 1994. Of the scheduled banks, 224 are in the public sector and these account for about 82.4% of the commercial banking system. In the public sector banking system, there are 196 Regional Rural Banks(RRBs) and the rest 28 are regular commercial banks. RRBs were set up especially to increase the flow of credit to small borrowers in the rural areas. These banks have specified areas of operations usually limited to two or three districts. Among the public sector banks, the State Bank of India is the largest (as on March 31, 1994) with 8,715 offices, deposits of Rs 892,910 million and advances of Rs 501,110 million.
The banking system has grown enormously in the last thirty years.
| 1969 | March 1995 | |
| Number of banks | 89 | 282 |
| Number of bank branches | 8262 | 62264 |
| Population per branch | 62697 | 14000 |
| Deposits (Rs.billion) | 46 | 3758 |
| Per capita deposits (Rs.) | 90 | 4148 |
| Deposits as % of GDP | 13 | 41 |
| Credit/Deposit Ratio (%) | 78 | 59 |
| Cash/Deposit Ratio (%) | 8 |
The 62,264 bank branches are distributed all over the country, including rural areas.
Indian Banks Abroad
101 branches of 9 Indian commercial banks were operating in foreign countries, as on March 31, 1994. These branches are spread over a number of countries and located in major centers like London, New York, Paris, Tokyo, Singapore and Bahrain. These branches specialize in various areas of international trade including financing of foreign trade.
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