State-run banks may get to save about 3,000 crore a year as the transaction rate for ATMs has nearly halved.
This follows the finance ministry's directive to the banks to share the new ATMs that they set up under the 'lead bank' arrangement. The government is set to roll out a similar arrangement for business correspondents across the nation as well, allowing a single bank to bid for the entire district.
The government, which had invited bids for the 5,000 ATMs across Maharashtra, has been able to reduce cost of a transaction for on-site ATMs to 8.30, from as much as 16 for small banks, a finance ministry official said.
"We are also expecting revenue from advertising at the ATMs, which will help recover 20%-30% of the cost," the official added.
An ATM is viable only when it clocks an average of about 150 transactions per day.
State-run banks owned 41.5% of the 60,153 ATMs across the country at the end of last March, government data shows.
The ministry expects the bid price to go down further. "The cost will reduce by another 30% if there are 200 transactions at a particular ATM," the official said.
As part of its measures to cut down the fixed costs of banks, the ministry had recently asked the public sector banks to provide details of all branches that have not made profit for the past two fiscals.
During the current fiscal, the ministry has linked the capitalisation programme to the profitability of the banks. It has directed all 21 state-run banks to improve their performance, and has set up new parameters to measure their financial and functional efficiency.
Besides, it has asked the banks to improve their low-cost savings and current deposits, employee-branch ratio and profit per employee. It has also directed the banks to post 80% of their total staff in the branches, leaving just 20% for the head offices.
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