A Study on Awareness of Low Income Group for Microfinance Institutions in Ahmedabad City

The objective of the paper is to study awareness about Microfinance institutions in rural areas, reasons for less awareness, satisfaction level of the rural people toward banking services and to assess the performance of the banks which are working in the rural areas which mainly include the co operative banks and regional rural banks. Structured questionnaire designed on the basis of literature review was used to collect data from 500 people residing in Gota, Ghatlodiya, shahpur and Vadaj of Ahmadabad. The paper first describes in detail the awareness of microfinance and Gujarat followed with a review of scenario at the global level. The third section analyses the data with the help of Chi-square test and Tabulation followed with the discussion of analysis, recommendations and conclusion indicating that there is lot of opportunity for the commercial banks to explore the rural unbanked areas. Though Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) and Primary Agriculture Credit Societies (PACS) have good coverage but most of them are running into losses. Commercial banks should seize this opportunity rather than looking at it as a social obligation.