New Delhi: Finance Minister P Chidambaram today said public sector banks plan to hire 50,000 persons and open 10,000 branches in the current fiscal.

"This year public sector banks are expected to add 10,000 branches of which 2,000 are to be by Regional Rural Banks. Correspondingly there will be recruitment. In fact all the banks put together are expected to recruit some 50,000 persons in the current year," he told reporters after meeting heads of PSU banks.

The public sector banks had a sanctioned strength of about 8 lakh employees as on March 31, 2012. They hired around 63,000 persons in the last financial year.

The country's largest bank SBI alone recruited 20,000 clerical staff and 1,200 officer level employees. Other PSU banks hired 22,000 officers and 20,000 clerical staff.

There were 84,489 vacancies at various levels in the state-owned banks at the end of 2010-11.

Seeking to improve manpower management in the public sector banks, the Finance Ministry recently said that the 19 nationalized banks should have a total number of 442 GMs to oversee banking operations.

Chidambaram further said he "impressed upon" banks to cooperate on restarting the stalled projects.

"The 215 stalled projects which were identified were due to the effort of the banks...the special cell under Cabinet Secretariat will get into the full steam in the next few days.

 "I think they had taken a meeting yesterday with eight stalled projects. Today, I think they are taking a meeting with another 14 stalled projects. I have told banks to cooperate with the special cell," he said.

The Finance Minister further said banks will do whatever is needed to get the stalled project off the ground.

"The goal is to get 20-30 stalled projects off the mark and reach the COD (commencement operation date) by the end of this month. Every month we must see a certain number of stalled projects getting implemented," he said.

Read More:

10 In-Demand Recession Proof Jobs of All Time

6 Revolutionary Companies of India in 2013