Compounding the woes of the customers standing in long queues at the ATMs, it has come to light that more than one-fourth of the machines in the State are dysfunctional. Limited availability of lower denomination notes and slow progress of recalibration of the ATMs are aggravating their plight.
According to information, only 5,900 of the 8,036 ATMs deployed across the State as on November 21 are active. The banks have to “re-activate” the rest as per the State Level Bankers Committee (SLBC) but have not given priority to the problem. This apart, the banks could recalibrate only about 20 per cent ATMs. “It will take another 10 days to complete the recalibration of all ATMs in the State,” said a senior official of a Public Sector Bank.
No homogeneity
In fact, there is no correlation in the data of the Reserve Bank and the SLBC on ATMs. There are 8,309 ATMs as on June 30 as per the SLBC. The RBI, however, says there are 9,199 including 1,611 private banks’ ATMs. Similarly, the SLBC says there were 7143 ATMs as on March 31, 2015. The RBI says there were 8,438 ATMs, including 1493 private banks’ ATMs.
Strikingly, the number of ATMs has come down to 8,036 by November 21. “It could be possible as banks close down the ATMs if the patronage and hits are not on expected lines. But closing down more than 270 ATMs in a span of just four months is surprising,” said a senior banker, who didn’t want to be named.
The number of the ATMs is higher if the machines installed by the foreign banks such as the HSBC and the Standard Chartered Bank are to be considered. They installed 99 ATMs as on March 31, 2015. The number grew to 112 by June 2016.
Apart from these, there are 1,187 white label ATMs, which don’t have the logo of any bank, in the State maintained by firms like Tata Communications Payment Solutions Ltd. in March 2015. Their strength increased to 1,249 by June 2016.
