Selvakumar Marimuthu

Regional Rural Banks: a Performance View Selvakumar Marimuthu

The importance of credit to rural sector is not debatable. This is especially true in the case of rural poor, who always find lack of finance as the main impediment in pursuing their economic activities. Therefore, an efficient and effective system of rural credit is necessary to sustain, stimulate and strengthen the rural sector. To serve this purpose more and more RRBs are being set up as is evident from their growth. The number of banks rose from 6 in 1975 to 196 in 2005 and their branches from 17 to 14762 covering 512 districts during the same period. Regional Rural Banks attend the credit needs not only of agriculture and allied activities but also of rural artisans, small-scale industries and other productive activities in the tertiary sector. In this way RRBs contribute to simultaneous development in different sectors of the economy. This book makes the detailed analysis of RRBs in Tamilnadu, a state of India.