Factors affecting demand and supply of agricultutal credit to farmers in Rivers State of Nigeria

Abstract

Twenty formal and informal financial institutions and 300 farmer-beneficiaries that operate in the state were randomly selected and structured questionnaires administered to them and as well as personal interview schedule. Both primary and secondary data were collected for the study. The primary data were obtained through a sample survey of the formal and informal financial institutions and the farmer beneficiaries of their services. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the data. Kendal coefficient was also used to analyze the data. Determinants of agricultural credit to farmers in Niger Delta were ranked on five-point scale of extremely important, very important, important to some extent, not important and extremely unimportant. The scale was 5-1 respectively. The Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance (W) was used to test the degree of association of the financial institutions rankings of the identified militating factors. This suggest that similar weights were not attached to the influencing factors thus resulting in no significant agreement among the financial institutions in their rankings of the militating effects of each factor. It therefore, means that there is no consensus among the financial institutions as to the observation that the identified factors influence the choice of enterprises funded by the financial institutions.

Keywords: factors, demand and supply of credit, and farmers, Rivers state

Journal of Agriculture, Forestry and the Social Sciences Vol 3(1) 2005: 26-34