A post is being shared on social media claiming that the government-owned Central Bank of India is planning to close 600 of its branches by the end of March 2023. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: The government-owned Central Bank of India is planning to shut down 600 of its branches by the end of March 2023.
Fact: The Central Bank of India through their official social media handles clarified that they did not make any decision to shut down a large number of branches during the fiscal year 2022-23. However, the bank emphasised in their press note that they would follow routine exercises like every bank to re-align/ shift/ merge/ close/ open branches on regular basis to achieve corporate business objectives. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether the state-owned Central Bank of India has made any such announcement of shutting down its branches by the end of March 2023, we found that the ‘Reuters’ news website has published an article reporting similar information on ’05 May 2022′. Reuters reported that the Central Bank of India is planning to shut down 13% of its branches by the end of March 2023 to improve its financial health.
Responding to the rumours spreading about the closure of their branches, the Central Bank of India has issued a clarification on all of its social media handles on 08 May 2022. Central Bank of India clarified that as of now they did not make any decision to shut down a large number of its branches during the fiscal year 2022-23.
However, the Central Bank of India emphasised that they would follow routine exercises like every bank to re-align/ shift/ merge/ close/ open branches on regular basis to achieve corporate business objectives. Reuters too had published an article reporting this clarification issued by the Central Bank of India.
To sum it up, the Central Bank of India did not announce the closure of its 600 branches by the end of March 2023.
