Lead District Bank

About Lead Bank Scheme

•The genesis of the Lead Bank Scheme (LBS) can be traced to the Study Group headed by Prof. D. R. Gadgil (Gadgil Study Group) on the Organizational Framework for the Implementation of the Social Objectives, which submitted its report in October 1969.
•The Lead Bank Scheme, introduced towards the end of 1969, envisages assignment of lead roles to individual banks (both in public sector and private sector) for the districts allotted to them.
•A bank having a relatively large network of branches in the rural areas of a given district and endowed with adequate financial and manpower resources has generally been entrusted with the lead responsibility for that district. Accordingly, all the districts in the country have been allotted to various banks.
•The lead bank acts as a leader for coordinating the efforts of all credit institutions in the allotted districts to increase the flow of credit to agriculture, small-scale industries and other economic activities included in the priority sector in the rural and semi-urban areas, with the district being the basic unit in terms of geographical area.

Objectives of The Lead Bank Scheme

•To identify those regions which are unbanked and underbanked in districts and also to evaluate their physiographic, agro climatic end Socio-economic conditions through economic survey.
•To help in removing regional imbalances through appropriate credit deployment.
•To extend banking facilities to unbanked areas.

Area Approach

•The basic idea was to have an “area approach” for targeted and focused banking.
•The banker’s committee, headed by S. Nariman, concluded that districts would be the units for area approach and each district could be allotted to a particular bank which would perform the role of a Lead Bank.
Usha Thorat Committee Recommendations
•High-Power Committee headed by Mrs Usha Thorat, Deputy Governor of the RBI, to suggest reforms in the LBS.
•The committee recommended enhancing the scope of the scheme and suggested a sharper focus on facilitating financial inclusion rather than a mere review of the government sponsored credit schemes

The scheme mainly aimed at developing plans and programs for the development of banking and credit structure in the rural areas by adopting area approach. Its main ob¬jective was removal of regional and sectoral imbalances.
Originally, the District was se¬lected as the unit for development. Later on, block became the basic unit. Presently special emphasis is laid on the improvement of functional clusters of villages in a block.
Lead Bank Scheme was the first scheme, which brought together financial institutions and develop¬ment agencies on a common platform to work for the economic upliftment of the rural poor.
The basic functions of the Lead Bank are as follows:
(i) Preparation of Service Area credit-Plans and Annual Action Plans, etc.
(ii) Monitoring the progress of the implementation of the credit plans.
(iii) Monitoring the progress of the implementation of the special programme
(iv) Convening of Meetings of District Consultative Committee, District Level Re¬view Committee, Standing Committee, etc.
(v) Co-ordination of the Efforts of Government, Developmental and Credit Agen¬cies, etc.
* Lead Bank Scheme for Ratnagiri District
Bank Of India is Lead Bank in Ratnagiri District with presence of 59 Branches all over Ratnagiri District. Banking Network in Ratnagiri District is given below for your information purpose.

•Lead Bank working falls under the guidelines of SLBC (State Level Bankers Committee) and RBI (Reserve Bank Of India).
•Lead Bank act as a coordinating agency between Verious Financial Institutions and various Government Departments to implement and monitor various Government Schemes.
•Various Government Schemes falls under the review of Lead Bank are as follows
-CMEGP
-PMEGP
-MUDRA
-PMSVANIDHI
-PMAY
-MSRLM
-PMJDY
-STANDUP INDIA
-PMFME
-AIF
-APAM
-MPBCDC
-LIDCOM

•Lead Bank also monitor various drives and camps initiated by DFS (Department of Financial Services)