Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh

The rural poor generally have low income to sustain their livelihood. They do not have the capacity to start any income generating activities due to lack of financial capital. They also have very limited access to the formal financial institutions because of the inability to fulfill the collateral r...

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Main Author:	Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir
Format:	Thesis
Language:	English English
Published:	2006
Subjects:	Agricultural intensification - Bangladesh - Case studies
Online Access:	http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/596/1/t_fp_2006_37.pdf
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id	my-upm-ir.596
record_format	uketd_dc
spelling	my-upm-ir.5962013-05-27T06:49:33Z Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh 2006-10 Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir The rural poor generally have low income to sustain their livelihood. They do not have the capacity to start any income generating activities due to lack of financial capital. They also have very limited access to the formal financial institutions because of the inability to fulfill the collateral requirements. Thus, in order to widen the rural poor’s access to finance, microcredit programs have been launched which require no collateral to obtain loans. The major goal of the microcredit program is to provide financial capital to the rural poor in order to engage them in income generating activities for alleviating their poverty. The main objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of microcredit program in alleviating poverty among rural borrowers in Bangladesh. Primary data were collected from three local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and a government agricultural project. Eight hundred borrowers were selected through simple random sampling technique. Data were collected from those borrowers who took loan for the first time in 2003 and were involved in agricultural activities. A conditional demand equation on household income, household expenditure and borrower’s saving was estimated using the Weighted Two Stage Least Square (WTSLS) technique. Logit model was used to examine whether the microcredit program benefited the borrowers. Household income was found to increase significantly due to the influence of loaned money. The study results also showed that the amount of credit taken by the borrowers had positive influence on the households’ food expenditure and borrower’s saving. Nevertheless, microcredit was found to have no influence on the households’ total expenditure due to the fact that the majority of the borrowers were poor and they could not even fulfill their basic needs like food. Thus, they had to spend more on food items as compared to other non-food items. Results of the logit analysis revealed that six variables had significant and positive influence on the binary dependent variable ‘Borrower well-being’. The significant variables were educational level, per day time spending on income generating activities by the family members, number of training received, expenditure on health care and share of food expenditure to total expenditure and mobility of the borrowers. Increase level of these six variables would provide higher probability for improving their well-being. Agricultural intensification - Bangladesh - Case studies 2006-10 Thesis http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/596/ http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/596/1/t_fp_2006_37.pdf application/pdf en public phd doctoral Universiti Putra Malaysia Agricultural intensification - Bangladesh - Case studies Faculty of Agriculture English
institution	Universiti Putra Malaysia
collection	PSAS Institutional Repository
language	English English
topic	Agricultural intensification - Bangladesh - Case studies
spellingShingle	Agricultural intensification - Bangladesh - Case studies Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
description	The rural poor generally have low income to sustain their livelihood. They do not have the capacity to start any income generating activities due to lack of financial capital. They also have very limited access to the formal financial institutions because of the inability to fulfill the collateral requirements. Thus, in order to widen the rural poor’s access to finance, microcredit programs have been launched which require no collateral to obtain loans. The major goal of the microcredit program is to provide financial capital to the rural poor in order to engage them in income generating activities for alleviating their poverty. The main objective of this study is to assess the effectiveness of microcredit program in alleviating poverty among rural borrowers in Bangladesh. Primary data were collected from three local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and a government agricultural project. Eight hundred borrowers were selected through simple random sampling technique. Data were collected from those borrowers who took loan for the first time in 2003 and were involved in agricultural activities. A conditional demand equation on household income, household expenditure and borrower’s saving was estimated using the Weighted Two Stage Least Square (WTSLS) technique. Logit model was used to examine whether the microcredit program benefited the borrowers. Household income was found to increase significantly due to the influence of loaned money. The study results also showed that the amount of credit taken by the borrowers had positive influence on the households’ food expenditure and borrower’s saving. Nevertheless, microcredit was found to have no influence on the households’ total expenditure due to the fact that the majority of the borrowers were poor and they could not even fulfill their basic needs like food. Thus, they had to spend more on food items as compared to other non-food items. Results of the logit analysis revealed that six variables had significant and positive influence on the binary dependent variable ‘Borrower well-being’. The significant variables were educational level, per day time spending on income generating activities by the family members, number of training received, expenditure on health care and share of food expenditure to total expenditure and mobility of the borrowers. Increase level of these six variables would provide higher probability for improving their well-being.
format	Thesis
qualification_name	Doctor of Philosophy (PhD.)
qualification_level	Doctorate
author	Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir
author_facet	Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir
author_sort	Mahmud, Kazi Tanvir
title	Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
title_short	Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
title_full	Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
title_fullStr	Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
title_full_unstemmed	Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh
title_sort	effectiveness of micro-credit for poverty alleviation under agricultural intensification projects in bangladesh
granting_institution	Universiti Putra Malaysia
granting_department	Faculty of Agriculture
publishDate	2006
url	http://psasir.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/596/1/t_fp_2006_37.pdf
_version_	1747810256727048192

Effectiveness of Micro-Credit for Poverty Alleviation Under Agricultural Intensification Projects in Bangladesh

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