. 56, 000 crore, respectively, as on march 31, 2008 compared to the corresponding figures of about rs. 68 crore and rs. 45 crore, at the time of nationalisation. i understand that the iob had the distinction of being the first bank in the indian banking industry to obtain iso 9001 certification for its computer policy and planning department in september 1999. the bank also made its maiden ipo in september 1999 and the government ’ s ownership currently stands at 75 per cent. i do hope that the bank would maintain its growth momentum in the days to come and be able to realise the vision of its founder on a larger scale. 3. in the backdrop of growth and development of the indian overseas bank, i believe, a broader perspective of the indian banking industry would be of interest to this audience. let me, therefore, take this opportunity today to present a broad overview of the achievements and progress made by the indian banking sector in the last two decades and the emerging frontiers of the indian banking system, in the post - reform era. the transformation of the indian banking sector 4. as you are aware, the financial sector reforms in the country were initiated in the beginning of the 1990s. the reforms have brought about a sea change in the profile of the banking sector. our implementation of the reforms process has had several unique features. our financial sector reforms were undertaken early in the reform cycle. notably, the reforms process was not driven by any banking crisis, nor was it the outcome of any external support package. besides, the design of the reforms was crafted through domestic expertise, taking on board the international experiences in this respect. the reforms were carefully sequenced with respect to the instruments to be used and the objectives to be achieved. thus, prudential norms and supervisory strengthening were introduced early in the reform cycle, followed by interest - rate deregulation and a gradual lowering of statutory pre - emptions. the more complex aspects of legal and accounting measures were ushered in subsequently when the basic tenets of the reforms were already in place. 5. the public sector banks continue to be a dominant part of the banking system. as on march 31, 2008, the psbs accounted for 69. 9 per cent of the aggregate assets and 72. 7 per cent of the aggregate advances of the scheduled commercial banking system. a unique feature of the reform of the public sector banks was the process of their financial restructuring. the banks were recapitalised by the government to meet prudential

- enabled branches and the number of neft transactions originated by them. i would like to urge upon the bankers present here to initiate appropriate measures to stimulate greater usage of this payment medium and thereby, improve their share in this regard. in order to popularise the e - payments in the country, the rbi, on its part, has waived the service charges to be levied on the member banks, till march 31, 2009, in respect of the rtgs and neft transactions. the rbi also provides, free of charge, intra - day liquidity to the banks for the rtgs transactions. the service charges to be levied by banks from their customers for rtgs & neft have, however, been deregulated and left to discretion of the individual bank. it has been our experience that while some of the banks have rationalised their service charges and a few have made it even cost - free to the customers, there are also certain banks that have fixed multiples slabs or unreasonably high service charges, at times linked to the amount of the transaction, for providing these services to their customers – even though the rbi provides these services to the banks free of charge. i would therefore, like to take this opportunity to impress upon such banks the need to have proper appreciation of the underlying policy intent of the rbi in waiving the charges for these services, and to adopt a pragmatic approach in determining their own service charges for providing these electronic payment products to their customers. atm networks 12. as many of you might know, the national financial switch ( nfs ) network started its operations on august 27, 2004 and is owned and operated by institute for development and research in banking technology ( idrbt ), hyderabad. nfs is one of the several shared atm networks which interconnect the banks ’ atm switches together and thus, enable interoperability of the atm cards issued by any bank across the entire network. while there are a few other atm networks also functioning in the country, the nfs has emerged to be the largest one, with a network of 28, 773 atms of 31 banks, including 16 public sector banks. the primary objective of any atm network, like the nfs, is to make the atm deployment more economical and viable for banks by pooling their respective atm resources. the main advantage of an atm network is that it obviates the need for having bank - specific multiple atm installations in the same geographical area, thereby reducing the