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Abstract

The study examined farmers’ access to microcredit and resource use in Ekiti State Sponsored microcredit financing scheme, Nigeria. The objectives of the study were to examine the influence of socio-economic characteristics of farmers on amount of loan accessed, determine the volume of loans demanded, received and repaid on gender basis, ascertain the constraints in accessing the loans as well as repayment of loan, access the determinants of farmers’ access to microcredit in Ekiti State Multipurpose Credit Agency, Primary data were generated with structured questionnaire administered to 132 respondents. The respondents were drawn by simple random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics and Regression model were employed. Findings from the study showed that 67.4% of the responses were men, with a mean age of 46years while 95.4% had formal education, with a mean family size of 5 persons per household. About 67.4% of the respondents were married, while 47% had farm size between 0.6 and 1 hectares. 47.7% of the farmers obtained their credit from Ekiti State Multipurpose Credit Scheme, five of the variables examined were statistically significant. The result showed that age, gender, level of education, interest rate and previous loan amount are the major factors that influence farmers’ accessibility to micro-credit from Ekiti State Multi-purpose Credit Agency. Age, gender, level of education and interest rate had negative effects while previous loan amount had a positive effect on farmers’ access to micro-credit. The study also revealed that women perform better than men in loan repayment. The repayment performance of Male farmers was 52.6% while that of Female farmers was 84.1%. It is recommended that there should be increase in the level of awareness of microcredit financing.

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