Agricultural Credit by Regional Rural Banks: an Empirical Study

Agriculture is the backbone of our economy and its prosperity can largely be responsible for the well being of the entire economy. Farm finance has a place of pride in the agro-socio-economic development of the country both at micro and macro levels. Its catalystic role strengthens the farming business and augments the productivity of scarce resources. Application of new technological inputs obtained through farm finance helps boost of agricultural productivity. It is brought to notice by many studies on agricultural credit that among all the agencies involved in agricultural credit, the individual moneylenders as non-institutional agencies till recently, have been most important both from the point of view of number of loans and the volume of business. The institutional sources comprise the Co-operatives, Scheduled Commercial Banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs).

The study evaluates performance of RRB's in deploying agricultural credit and evolve a package of measures for effective and efficient performance of RRBs.

The objectives of the study are to review the historical performance of institutional agencies in deploying agricultural credit, to examine the progress made by RRBs in Agricultural Credit, to assess the Agricultural Credit performance through sample respondents and lastly, to evolve a package of measures for making RRBs effective in agricultural credit deploying.