Banking in India
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.