Agartala, Dec 24 (IANS): The Bharatiya Mahila Bank (BMB) will open four more branches in four capital cities of the northeastern states, officials said here Tuesday.

"Four branches of BMB would be set up in Agartala (Tripura), Shillong (Meghalaya), Gangtok (Sikkim) and Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh) within the current fiscal (2013-14)," a senior official of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) told IANS.

He said that the BMB would open 16 more branches, including four in northeastern states, taking the total to 25 by the end of March next year.

Besides the four northeastern capital cities, new branches of BMB would be set up during 2013-14 in Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Shimla, Bhubaneswar, Jaipur, Dehradun, Patna, Naya Raipur, Panaji, Srinagar, Thiruvananthapuram and Ranchi.

Aiming to economically empower women, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi inaugurated the BMB Nov 19 simultaneously opening seven branches of the bank.

The bank's nine branches, one each in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Indore, Bangalore, Guwahati and Lucknow, are all operational.