Fertilisers-Necessary Change of Focus

relax its policy of pushing the banks to go to areas other than the metropolitan cities and the larger towns. As part of this policy change, permission has already been given to banks to open 149 new branches in Bombay alone. This compares with a total of 361 new branches opened in all metropolitan cities and port towns in the two and a half years between the nationalisation of the 14 large banks and the end of 1971. In other words, not only are banks going to open fewer new branches in the next three years, but a larger number of them are going to be in the bigger cities and towns.