Performance of Regional Rural Banks in Indian Economy: An Overview

Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) also known as 'Gramin' bank have emerged as an important rural credit delivery institution in India for meeting the credit requirements of the rural poor. These rural banks have been working for more than four decades in the Indian rural credit delivery system. They are state sponsored, regionally based and rural oriented commercial banks. The basic objective of this study is to analyse the growth and financial performance of RRBs in India from the period 2013 to 2016 based on some selected parameters like area coverage, profit and loss making RRBs, trends of profits and accumulated losses, overall position of non-performance assets and recovery rate. We have mainly used secondary data collected from various journals, books and available websites related to regional rural banks. The review of performance of RRBs shows the good growth performance of RRBs for providing better banking services to the rural people. From the analysis, we can draw the conclusion that rapid expansion of RRBs has been able to substantially reduce the regional disparities in respect of banking facilities in India.