Abstract
The study investigated the comparative analysis of loan applications and disbursements to large and small scale farmer beneficiaries of Bank of Agriculture from 2010-2016 in Anambra State, Nigeria. The specific objectives were to ascertain the socio-economic characteristics of the large and small scale farmer beneficiaries, to estimate the total amounts of applications and disbursements to large and small farmer beneficiaries of BOA loans and constraints militating against loan administration by BOA staff. A multistage sampling procedure involving purposive and random sampling methods were used to select 256 respondents for the study. Data were collected from both primary and secondary sources. Primary data were collected using two sets of questionnaire; one for the farmers and the other for the bank officials while secondary data were sourced from loan transaction records in the headquarters and branch offices of BOA in the State. Collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics technique. Findings indicated that the large scale farmers were more advanced in age, more educated, had higher years of farming experience, number of persons in the household and number of males among them than the small scale farmers, who, however, were better at repayment. Majority (60.00%) of applications and 60.33% of disbursements to the large scale farmers were for poultry and fish production while the small scale farmers’ most (53.28%) applications and disbursements (53.26%) were for the production of crops. The most serious constraints to loan administration by the bank staff were low repayment rate, inadequate fund for lending, insufficient staff for credit administration, inadequate collateral provision and loan diversion by beneficiaries. The provision of more funds, more skilled staff, and adequate logistics to the BOA by government, timely disbursed of approved amount, minimization of bureaucratic procedure involved in the administration of the facilities by the BOA and formation of more cooperative groups by the beneficiaries were recommended.
Highlights
Agriculture plays vital roles in the economies of all countries of the world especially developing economies like Nigeria [1]
Stage III witnessed the random selection of five large scale and five small scale farmer-beneficiaries of the bank’s loans from each of the 12 selected Local Government Areas (LGA) to arrive at a total of 240 respondents (120 large scale farmers and 120 small scale farmers)
16 of the Bank of Agriculture staff were randomly selected for information on loan administration by BOA to arrive at a grand total of 256 respondents
Summary
Agriculture plays vital roles in the economies of all countries of the world especially developing economies like Nigeria [1]. One of the problems confronting farmers and agricultural productivity and growth in Nigeria is inadequate capital despite the glaring contributions of agricultural sector in the overall economic development of the country [9]. Agricultural credit is closely related to providing needed resources, which most farmers cannot source from their personal savings In this regard, the provision of credit has to be made a vital way of promoting agricultural development in Nigeria. [12] observed that the agricultural sector which accounted for the largest single portion (about 42%) of national output (GDP) was the least favoured by commercial banks in terms of loans and advances among all economic sectors. In most of the developing countries such as Nigeria, the economic development is extricable trapped in a vicious cycle of insufficient investment and resource input, low productivity and low level savings resulting in low level output
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