Name: Sita Kumari, Anjan Choudhary
Country: India

Year: 2023
Volume: Volume-10, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 63-75

Priority Lending is essential to India's inclusive prosperity. In order to ensure that economic development is consistent and filters down to all levels of the economy, credit allocation to priority industries is essential. The Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCB) in India are required by RBI to supply credit to priority sectors that have been defined as critical. All banks must meet the goals and subgoals for lending to priority sectors as a minimum percentage of Adjusted Net Bank Credit (ANBC) or Off-Balance Sheet Exposure (OBE), whichever is higher. This paper aims to understand how credit is delivered to the priority sector by public sector banks (PSBs) and private sector banks (PrSBs), analyze the ability of the banks to meet the targets and subtargets as Agriculture Advances, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Advances, and Weaker Sections Advances, and determine whether these banks are following the RBI's recommendations in providing credit to various sub segments of the priority sector, in particular, Agriculture, MSMEs, and Weaker Sections. Ratios were computed to determine the percentage of priority in the ANBC and the proportion of these priority advances in the overall advances.
KEYWORDS : Priority Sector, Public Sector Bank, Private Sector Bank, Adjusted Net Bank Credit, Off Balance Sheet Exposure, Total Advances, Agriculture, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, and Weaker Sections.