This paper explores the link between poverty and resource allocation, including the management of natural resources, by chronically indebted rural smallholders in developing countries. The paper proposes a formal intertemporal model of a credit constrained farm household that can invest in...

In the face of seasonal climate variability, the smallholder farmers, particularly those in rural communities, are among the most adversely affected. As a way to address this, together with concern on low productivity, the Philippine government has been implementing a range of risk management...

Crop insurance is a risk management tool designed to even out agricultural risks and address the consequences of natural disasters to make losses more bearable, especially to the marginalized farmers. In the Philippines, the Philippine Crop Insurance Corporation (PCIC) implements and manages the...

The Agricultural Competitiveness Enhancement Fund (ACEF) is an ongoing loan and grant program in the Philippines for agriculture and fisheries. From the start of its actual implementation in 2000 up to the present, it has been plagued by numerous problems which significantly derailed the...

The shift to a market-oriented credit and financial policy was expected to spur rural financing by the private sector that would help usher growth in the agriculture and rural areas. However, the rural areas have continued to suffer from the lack of access to financial services of banks. Despite...

Centenary RDB is a commercial bank that provides deposit, credit and money transfer services indiscriminately to men and women of lower income. By insisting on loan recovery and cost coverage, it has reached more men and women in rural areas than any other institution in Uganda. With minimum...

This Conference brings together the financial experience of rural and agricultural microfinance institutions and the experience of the Common Fund and other agencies with promoting commodities and small and micro-entrepreneurs producing, processing and marketing commodities. We expect that this...

By the mid-1970s, in virtually all of Africa, strategies of modernization and technology transfer had clearly failed to initiate self-sustained processes of development. Government intervention and centralized planning had spurred economic disaster, rather than growth. In the world of finance,...

We in the community of microfinance specialists want to help alleviate poverty. We think microfinance is a useful tool. Yet, by bringing these two concerns together, we might be mixing up two diverging ends: one is poverty reduction; the other one the development of a healthy microfinance...