Bhopal: 540 ATMs shut down across state due to High upkeep cost

Bhopal: 540 ATMs shut down across state due to High upkeep cost

Staff ReporterUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 12:17 AM IST
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In Madhya Pradesh over 540 ATMs have been shutdown between 2017 and 2018 as per the data of Reserve Bank of India. Most affected are the small banks, as they have discontinued the vendor services due to increasing upkeep costs.  The security guards and maintenance staff entrusted to these ATMs are now left unemployed adding already looming crisis of unemployment.

As per RBI data, Bank of India alone had 702 ATMs across Madhya Pradesh till December 2017. But come December 2018, the bank had closed 78 ATMs reducing the number to 624. There were 8404 ATMs of public sector banks across the state in the year 2017. This number reduced to 7864 in the year 2018 thereby reducing 540 ATMs across the state.

Big public and private sectors are not much affected such as State Bank of India or ICICI Bank, but it is the medium size banks such as Central Bank of India, United Bank of India or Bank of Baroda that have been forced to close large number of ATMs. Banks with big market cap are adjusting to the new norms as they have their own ATMs while other banks provide services through vendors and vendors are not compensated by them.

Situation worst in rural areas
The situation is worse in rural areas where the residents are facing most issues. These areas have a few branches, so is the situation of ATMs. Most of the times around 10 per cent of the ATMs remain dysfunctional due to technical snags or unavailability of cash. In such situation the bank account owners in these areas have to travel longer distance for cash.

Trouble started with demonetisation
Officials from Confederation of ATM Industry (CATMi) on condition of anonymity said that Rs 2,000 denomination for which the first re-calibration had to be made started the troubles. Currently the biggest denomination is unofficially not available with the banks or is seldom available.

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