Performance Evaluation of Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) in India

Abstract

"The future of India lies in its villages", Mahatma Ghandhi.

In order to stay alive in the present cutthroat atmosphere, banks should be strengthened adequately and would attain competitiveness through the use of its obtainable resources and managing business in effective manner. Therefore it is very important to assess the performance of the regional rural banks (RRBs) in India from time to time.

Regional Rural Banks (also RRBs), whose development process was started in October 2, 1975 are next-door level banking organizations progressively providing services in 644 notified districts of 27 States in India with 20,904 branches till 31st March 2016. They have been come into existence with a motive to serve first and foremost the rural areas of India with basic banking and financial services. Regional Rural Banks were established under the provisions of an Ordinance approved on September 26, 1975 and the RRB Act.1976 to offer adequate banking and credit facilities for agriculture and non-agricultural sectors. In the current paper, an attempt has been made to study the financial performance of Regional Rural Bank (RRB), keeping in view the present trends of regional rural banks in the national perspective. The study is analytic and exploratory in nature, and makes use of resultant data. The study found that the performance of Regional Rural Banks in India has drastically improved from the period of its establishment, as steps for their improvement were initiated by the Government of India after the amalgamation process.

Keywords: Performance, RBI, Amalgamation, RRBs, Key Performance Indicators, Rural Credit, NPA, Regional rural Banks

JEL Classification: G1, G2, H1, H7, I3