Rural credit and rural development: some issues.
Qureshi, Sarfraz K. ; Abbas, Kalbe ; Siddiqui, Ahmed Naeem 等
I. INTRODUCTION
Credit is an important instrument of acquiring command over the use
of working capital, fixed capital and consumption goods. In the wake of
Green Revolution, land and labour have receded into the background as
predominant factors of growth. Use of capital and adoption of modern
techniques of production which have become major sources of growth of
agricultural output necessitate access to credit markets for financing
their use. Institutional sources of credit have become quite significant
during the last few years. The rapid expansion of credit from
institutional sources can be seen from various indicators. The total
disbursement of agricultural loans has gone up from Rs. 306.75 million
in 1972-73 to Rs. 5,102.14 million in 1981-82. On a per acre basis, the
loans increased from Rs. 7.33 in 1972-73 to Rs. 106.83 in 1981-82. In
this perspective, the disparities in income and wealth in rural areas
would crucially depend on the distribution of capital among farms of
different sizes and occupational groups. Neglecting equitable
distribution of credit as a policy instrument for rural income
redistribution may be a serious omission by the policy-makers interested
in an improvement of rural equity.
It is easy to suggest a link between credit and distribution but
difficult to establish the exact relationship between the two variables.
Income-distribution effects of the credit delivery may depend on (i)
recipients of credit, i.e. the size and type of farm on which credit is
used, (ii) the price paid for the borrowed funds, and (iii) productivity
of the activities financed by credit. We shall present evidence on each
of these aspects to get an idea of the impact of credit on the
redistribution of income in rural areas.
Section II describes the broad features of the credit market and
credit relations in rural areas. The reforms in the credit distribution
system are the subject matter of Section III. The final section sums up
the conclusions and suggests some areas for further policy action.
II. ACCESS TO THE CREDIT MARKET AND CREDIT RELATIONS: A FACTUAL
BACKDROP
Information about the recipients, cost and use of credit is based
on data obtained from a Rural Credit Survey conducted in 1972-73, at
which about 100,000 rural households were enumerated. The details of the
survey have been presented by Qureshi in [2]. Information on various
indices of borrowings and the pattern of its use by different categories
of households is presented in Table 1.
The table shows that about 35 percent of rural households had
negotiated some form of loan during the survey year. The proportion of
households reporting borrowing exhibits significant variation from one
occupation to another. This proportion was lowest for non-farm
households and highest for tenant households. A slight positive
relationship between the size of holdings and the proportion of
borrowing households is noticed. The variation in the proportion may be
traced to a number of factors operating on both the supply and demand
sides of the credit market. The credit supply may be available to a
greater extent to occupations with larger incomes and higher levels of
wealth since such occupations may be relatively more credit-worthy. The
demand for consumption credit may be high for occupations with low
incomes while the demand for working and fixed capital may be low for
such occupations.
The amount of borrowing per rural family was Rs. 531. The
corresponding borrowing was Rs. 650 for cultivator households, Rs. 634
for absentee landlords and Rs. 324 for non-farm households. The
borrowing per family is positively correlated with the size of farm. The
borrowings per family also increased with an improvement in the status
of tenure as owners exhibit a higher level of borrowings than tenant
households.
The distribution of credit is also highly unequal. Farm households
are 63 percent of rural households but they obtain 77 percent of the
rural credit. The share of non-farm households is much lower in credit
than their relative share in the number of rural households. Owner,
owner-cum tenant and owner non-operator households appropriate a greater
proportion of credit than their proportion of rural households, while
all other categories of households get less than what their numbers
would indicate.
Sources of Credit
The duality in rural money markets is often a characteristic
feature found in most of the developing countries. It should be
interesting to look into the differences as regards the sources
available for obtaining credit for different categories of households.
Information on the percentage distribution of loans obtained from
different sources indicates that the non-institutional sources of credit
are dominant suppliers of credit for all categories of households and,
within the category of cultivator farms, for all sizes of farms. In the
case of all rural households, 89 percent of the credit was provided by
non-institutional sources. The dependence on such sources was least in
the case of absentee landlords and most for tenant households. The
dependence on the unorganized credit market was a decreasing function of
the size of farms. Farms of less than 5 acres had obtained 99 percent of
the credit from non-institutional sources while this proportion was only
71 percent for farms larger than 50 acres.
Within the non-institutional sources of credit, friends and
relatives are the most important sources of credit for all categories of
households and all sizes of farms. In the case of tenants, land-owners
are also an important source. Commission agents and traders are another
important source of credit for most categories of households but
especially for owner and non-farm households. Professional money-lenders
and factories do not figure very prominently for most categories of
households.
Of the institutional sources of credit, the Agricultural
Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP) and commercial banks are the most
important sources. Commercial banks are especially important in the case
of absentee landlords while the ADBP is an important source of credit
for land-owner households and for large farms.
Use of Credit
An examination of the various purposes for which borrowed funds
were used shows that consumption expenditure, including non-productive
items of expenditure, was the single most important purpose of
borrowings as it accounted for 48 percent of the total borrowings for
all rural families, 45.6 percent for non-farm families, 42 percent for
absentee land-owners, 57 percent for tenants and 47 percent for owner
households. In cultivator households, borrowed funds were used to
finance 34.42 percent of capital expenditure on farm, 8.59 percent of
working capital expenditure on farm and 7.71 percent of non-farm
business expenditure. In the case of non-farm households, 46 percent of
total borrowings were for non-farm business expenditure. Borrowings for
consumption purposes show a negative relationship with the size of farm
while borrowings for capital and current expenditures show a positive
relationship with the size of farm. Non-farm business expenditure
financed through borrowings was also important for owner and owner
non-operator households. The most important finding that emerges is that
a large proportion of the borrowed funds is used for productive purposes
even by the rural poor who include tenants, small farmers and non-farm
households.
Cost of Credit
It is commonly believed that rates of interest in the
non-institutional credit market are very high in developing countries
and that such rates in the organized credit market are deliberately kept
low by the government policy. Table 2 presents data on money rates of
interest actually charged by different credit agencies.
The most important finding that emerges is that the rates charged
by the noninstitutional agencies, though higher than the rates charged
by institutional credit agencies, are not outrageously high. The average
rate of interest was 10.13 percent for the combined category of both the
institutional and non-institutional loans. The percentages were 8.16 and
15.34 for institutional and non-institutional loans respectively. The
highest rates were charged by the professional moneylenders, with the
marketing intermediaries, landowners, friends and relatives, and
factories following them in this order. It is also interesting to note
that almost all non-institutional agencies had charged money rates on
some of the loans advanced by them which shows that those of their
agents who reported zero rates on their advances were either giving
incorrect information or were charging high implicit rates of interest
to compensate for the practice of not charging explicitly any rate of
interest on loans advanced by them.
In the case of the non-institutional sources of credit, most (more
than 95 percent) of the loans were without any interest. Only factories
advanced loans without interest to the tune of 70 percent of their
advances. Whether any implicit interest was charged or not could not be
gleaned from the available evidence. Since the interest rate on the
non-institutional credit is higher than the interest rate on the
institutional credit and the rural poor borrow largely from the
non-institutional sources, the cost of credit and the economic strength
of rural borrower are inversely related. The poor not only pay a high
rate of interest but are also largely excluded from the institutional
credit. Since the cost of institutional credit is relatively low, there
is an excess demand for credit in the institutional credit market. The
rate of return on borrowed funds is artificially high. The lenders need
not concern themselves with the end-use of the credit so long as they
are assured of full and timely repayment of the loans. For this reason,
the lenders follow a policy of security-based lending. Since lending is
linked to the availability of collateral, the access to the
institutional credit becomes proportional to the assets owned. Given the
skewed distribution of land in the rural areas, it is not surprising
that a highly unequal distribution of credit was observed to obtain in
rural Pakistan. The high cost of credit and the limited access to the
credit market have prevented the rural poor from expanding the base of
their production activities.
III. INSTITUTIONAL CREDIT REFORM
The analysis of credit market and credit relations in the previous
section shows clearly that the rural poor, composed mainly of small
farmers and non-farm households, have limited access to the
institutional credit. The empirical results show that the larger a
farmer is, the more likely he is to benefit from the institutional
credit. This situation is a result of the lending policies which link
credit availability to "credit-worthiness". The empirical
Findings on the debtor's losing his land and other assets to
professional money-lenders or other commercial non-institutional lenders
was not clear-cut as rates of interest were not found to be as high as
in other developing countries. Nevertheless it can safely be argued that
the institutional credit may have worsened income distribution by
providing low-cost capital to large landowners and absentee landlords.
The equity case for ensuring a larger flow of credit to the rural
poor needs no argument and flows directly from the policy-maker's
greater weight in the social welfare function for the welfare of the
poor. The efficiency argument for a redistribution of institutional
credit runs parallel to the case for a land reform. To improve the
distribution of credit, various policy steps have been taken in Pakistan
since the early 1970s. Only a brief description of some of the important
policy initiatives and a preliminary evaluation of selected policies
adopted in Pakistan are presented.
The 1972 Banking Reforms and the nationalization of commercial
banks in 1972 had assigned an important role to the State Bank not only
to increase the flow of credit to the agricultural sector but also to
redistribute it in favour of small farmers. A scheme for agricultural
loans was introduced by the State Bank in December 1972. An Agricultural
Credit Advisory Committee was also constituted to estimate credit
requirement each year for the agricultural sector. The distinctive
features of the innovations are many. Firstly, the institutional
agencies were urged to move away from the traditional criterion of
credit-worthiness in that the banks could advance loans against expected
increased production and against personal sureties. Secondly, quotas are
fixed for each bank to encourage their lending in support of
agricultural and rural development. The non-observance of these quotas
leads to an imposition of penalties in the form of non-interest-bearing
deposits with the State Bank. Thirdly, a pass-book system was introduced
to expedite the approval of institutional credit against land mortgage.
The pass-book is a legal document which contains a complete record of
the land owned by a particular farmer. Any institutional lender can
grant a loan on the security of land by just recording an entry in the
pass-book. Fourthly, quotas of production credit for different sizes of
farms are fixed under the Agricultural Purposes Rules, 1973. Under these
rules, 70 percent of institutional loans must be advanced to farms of
less than 12.5 acres, 20 percent to farms between 12.5 acres and 50
acres, and 10 percent to farms larger than 50 acres. Initially these
targets were in respect of small loans. In 1980-81 the entire amount of
credit to be provided by commercial banks to the agricultural sector was
to be treated as a mandatory target. There is also an element of
concession in the rate of interest on agricultural loans relative to
commercial and industrial loans. Interest-free production loans to small
farms are also granted up to a limit for the purpose of financing the
use of seeds, fertilizers and pesticides.
The Agricultural Credit Advisory Committee works out the
agricultural credit requirement each year. On the basis of the available
data on acreage under each crop in each province and observed
input-to-acreage ratios for different crops, total physical input
requirements are estimated. Using input prices, input requirement is
worked out in value terms. Accounting for farmers' own savings and
their access to private credit market, an estimate of the total credit
supply from institutional lending agencies is worked out.
Measuring the impact of credit reforms on rural equity is not easy.
Almost all government policies affect the distribution of income.
Isolating the impact of channelled official credit from the impact of
other policies is an impossible task on both conceptual and empirical
grounds. The concern with an improvement in the welfare of the small
farmers through increased flow of channelled credit is evident from the
fixation of quotas and the provision of interest-free loans even to
small farms. The introduction of commercial banks in the agricultural
lending has proved to be quite effective. The loans from banks have
increased sharply. The introduction of supervised credit schemes by some
of the credit institutions has also been a positive policy development.
A recent study by National Fertilizer Corporation [1] relating to the production loans by commercial banks shows that smaller farmers do
not benefit much from such loans.
The distribution of credit by farm size according to both bank
records and Farmers' Survey diverges drastically from the
prescribed pattern of distribution. Farmers owning less than 12.5 acres,
who should receive at least 70 percent of the total credit, get only 61
percent according to bank records and 48 percent according to the
Farmers' Survey data. Farms ranging in area from 12.5 acres to 50
acres get more than their prescribed share according to both the sources
of data while farms of more than 50 acres get less according to the bank
data and more according to the Farmers' Survey data. Proxy loaning
was quite extensive as the bank records showed borrowers who were not
traceable on the address shown in the banks' ledgers. Incentives
for proxy loaning are provided by interest-free loans to small farmers.
Influential borrowers seem to be the real beneficiary of such policies.
It is clear that no effective institutional monitoring set-up has been
evolved to supervise an effective enforcing of the credit reforms.
Though the pass-book system was introduced in August 1973, yet by
1982 only a small minority of farmers had obtained the pass-books. The
proportion of small farmers obtaining such documents was only 29 percent
while 91 percent of the farmers owning more than 50 acres had obtained
the pass-books. The official cost for obtaining the pass-book was only
Rs. 6 per pass-book. The unofficial cost of Rs. 205 per pass-book is
quite high. The high cost plus bureaucratic hurdles have perhaps denied
the small farmers the advantage of the pass-book system.
There is also a contradiction between a credit reform which is
small-farmer-oriented and the lending practices of credit institutions
which concentrate on loans for lumpy investments. The Agricultural
Development Bank provides credit mainly for purchase, of tractors,
installation of tubewells and special projects. The small subsistence farmers are unlikely to invest in lumpy investments. This contradiction
in the lending behaviour indicates clearly the gap between intentions
and practices.
IV. CONCLUSIONS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS
The foregoing discussion of the structure of rural credit market
and the institutional credit reforms needs no elaborate summary. Only
broad conclusions and their policy implications need to be highlighted.
Firstly, the dominant role that the non-institutional sources of
credit play for the rural poor is quite clearly borne out. Information
about the hidden interest rates was not available. The interest rate on
the non-institutional credit is much higher than the interest rate on
the institutional credit. One implication of this pattern of credit
distribution is that the cost of credit is inversely related to the
economic strength of the rural borrowers. A proper accounting of the
hidden and implicit costs would strengthen this conclusion.
Secondly, the price paid for institutional credit in Pakistan has
been kept low by the government. Maintaining low real rates of interest
has adverse consequences for income distribution. Low interest rates
always imply an excess demand for loans and require lenders to ration the credit not on the basis of productivity of credit but on
considerations of credit-worthiness. The rural poor, comprising small
landowners, tenants and non-farm households, had very little collaterals
of the kind acceptable to the institutional lenders. The low real rate
of interest results in an institutional bias in favour of large
land-owners, absentee landlords and rich traders in the rural areas. The
use of credit by such groups to finance new capital-intensive
technologies diminishes the demand for labour and worsens the pattern of
income distribution.
Thirdly, the approach adopted by the Agricultural Credit Advisory
Committee in estimating the credit needs is incomplete for policy
purposes. It estimates the demand for credit on the basis of
historically observed cropping pattern and input use. There is a need to
take into account the credit requirements arising from the adoption of
new technologies. In this regard, the need for further research is quite
urgent.
Fourthly, the institutional agencies need an encouragement to move
away from their preference of mortgage security for agricultural loans.
No hard evidence on the default rates by farm size is available in
Pakistan. The informed guess is that default is more common with the
influential large farmers who have been most reluctant to repay loans
and most able to resist government pressures to repay loans. Some of the
commercial banks have started supervised credit schemes. A careful
review of such efforts should suggest the most effective way of
extending loans to the rural poor on a large scale.
Fifthly, the institutional credit reform of the kind implemented in
Pakistan has not been effective, primarily because of the existing
unequal distribution of land and the outmoded tenurial set-up.
Sixthly, the provision of credit may help the poor only
temporarily. Lasting improvement cannot be expected unless production
relations are equitably restructured. The experience of the pass-book
system and of credit quotas for the small farmer in Pakistan clearly
indicates the need for a land reform prior to the credit reform. Large
land-owners expropriate a large share of cheap institutional credit
despite any legislative or executive provision to the contrary.
Inequitable working of the economic and social institutions is a major
factor explaining limited benefits for the poor. Leakage of credit
earmarked for the rural poor is a serious problem. Separate special
institutions for lending only to the target group may be established.
Seventhly, the success of any credit programme is contingent upon a
favourable policy framework and an infrastructural programme for rural
areas. For example, if terms of trade are biased against the rural poor,
additional credit may not have the desired impact. The importance of
social and eonomic infrastructure also needs no highlighting.
Eighthly, the uses for which additional rural credit is provided
should be technically sound. The new technology should be provably
profitable if credit support for its adoption is asked for.
Lastly, paucity of data on the relevant variables is a problem for
carrying out more rigorous analysis. There is a need for research in all
aspects of the rural credit as a supportive device for a proper
designing of a credit policy for rural development.
Comments on "Rural Credit and Rural Development: Some
Issues"
I congratulate the authors on presenting a paper on a subject of
vital significance to rural development. The authors have succeeded in
providing insights into the utilization pattern of credit in the rural
society. The paper gives a brief review of the Pass Book Scheme and the
1972 Bank Reforms. These changes were effected to help in the attainment
of national goals. For reasons best known to the authors their
description of policies does not adequately capture the policy
developments since 1973. Besides the Pass Book Scheme, an easy and
convenient procedure for advancing credit has recently been introduced.
Now a farmer can get loan by simply producing a certificate and a single
application form instead of producing a long list of documents. A
certificate about the bona tides of the applicant and the land under his
cultivation can now be issued by any dependable and responsible person
of the village, besides the chairman of the Union Council, Lumbardar, or
Zaildar. Secondly, one single form has replaced the nine documents
previously required for the purpose of obtaining production and
development loans. The Supervised Credit Scheme (SCS), though in
operation since the early '70s on a limited scale by the National
Bank of Pakistan, has meanwhile been extensively enlarged in its
coverage. The Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan, which alone
accounts for 37 percent of total institutional credit, provides as much
as 64 percent of its loans under the Supervised Credit Scheme. The State
Bank of Pakistan, too, had been directing the banks to patronize the
supervised credit scheme. In fact, banks are urged to bring their whole
agricultural loaning system under the umbrella of this scheme.
Interest-free loans are being given to small farmers having land
holdings up to 12 1/2 acres in the Punjab and the NWFP, 16 acres in Sind
and 32 acres in Baluchistan. Sugar and ghee mills too arrange credits
for the growers. The main objective of the credit policy is to help the
small farmer.
The credit limit of 70 percent for the small farmers, as mentioned
by the authors, can not be correctly evaluated with the data of the NFC survey. The NFC survey has certain drawbacks. For instance, it covered
only a limited number of farmers and confined itself only to the
institutional credit flowing from commercial banks.
The major findings which emerge from the paper are that the small
farmers do not get the 70-percent share of institutional loans as
stipulated by the agricultural rules of 1973. The reasons explaining the
failure to obtain the stipulated amount of credit include the linking of
credit availability to credit-worthiness, proxy loaning, the cost of
pass-book, and bureaucratic hurdles.
Some facts need to be set right before I proceed further. The
mandatory limit set for the commercial banks' credit to the small
farmer was about 50 percent of the total agricultural credit. According
to the NFC's Farmers' Survey, 48 per cent of the total
agricultural credit issued by commercial banks was received by the small
farmers. Their share stood at 60 percent in the case of the ADBP loans
in 1982-83. These facts also show improvement over time.
I must emphasize here that there are certain characteristics of
both the large and small farms which must be kept in view. For instance,
large farms will get inherently more loans as they are capital-deepening
while the small farms are labour-intensive and thus have a high
propensity to replace capital with labour. It is but natural that their
share in the overall credit pie would be disproportionate to their share
in total farms. I mean here they will be getting less credit per holding
as against the large farms whose capital-cum-labour structure is more
heavily tilted towards the former variable; but as far as credit
availability per acre is concerned, the small farmer is still favourably
placed.
Proxy loaning is nothing but an extension of credit to other
landholders. In certain cases, proxy loans may ultimately benefit the
medium or small farmers.
The authors have found faults with the credit procedures,
suggesting that as far as the issuance of Pass Books was concerned the
small farmer was the one who faced difficulty in having access to the
book. The fact, however, is that the small farmer was neither in a
position of getting the so-called 'desired' credit, nor in
need of it. With the introduction of improvement in credit policy, the
farmer is now in a position to obtain easily the supervised credit.
Demand for credit is a function of many factors, such as rate of
return, financial constraints, level of technology, degree of
commercialization of agriculture and stage of development. These
independent variables need to be looked into before one could pass any
judgement about the fulfilment of the credit requirements of the small
farmer. Notwithstanding this fact, incentives in the credit policy
significantly contribute to pushing up the demand for credit. The farmer
has his own set of opportunity costs and works out the economics which
finally determine his decisions. The authors need to undertake quite an
extensive exercise based on a much larger data-coverage before they can
achieve meaningful results. Despite these limitation of analysis,
however, the authors have presented quite a useful scenario of the
existing pattern of credit supply. Their study, if used carefully, can
surely help in instituting qualitative improvement in the formulation of
national credit policy for the rural sector.
Mushtaq Ahmad
Economic Analyst, Ministry of Finance, Government of Pakistan,
Islamabad
REFERENCES
[1.] National Fertilizer Corporation of Pakistan Ltd. Agricultural
Credit Survey (Commercial Banks - Production Loans). Lahore. September
1983.
[2.] Qureshi, Sarfraz Khan, et al. "Pakistan Rural Credit
Survey: Analytical Report". Islamabad: Pakistan Institute of
Development Economics, and Karachi" State Bank of Pakistan. 1984.
(To be published)
SARFRAZ K. QURESHI, KALBE ABBAS, AHMED NAEEM SIDDIQUI, and EJAZ
GHANI *
* Dr. Qureshi is Chief of Research, Messrs. Abbas and Siddiqui are
Staff Economists and Mr. Ghani is Research Assistant at the Pakistan
Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad (Pakistan)
Table 1
Profile of Credit Use in Rural Areas by Type of
Household and Size of Farm
Household Borrowing Borrowings
in each in each per house-
category as category hold
Type of Household percent of as percent (Rs.)
and Size of Farm rural of total
households rural
borrowings
A. Farm
a. Owner 24.96 34.57 734
b. Owner-cum-Tenant 12.29 16.13 696
c. Tenant 17.36 16.24 496
Sub-Total: Cultivator
(All Sizes) 54.61 66.93 650
Owner non-operator 8.53 10.18 634
Sub-Total: All Farm 63.14 77.11 648
B. Non-Farm 36.86 22.89 329
C. Grand Total: All Rural 100.00 100.00 531
D. Size of Cultivator Farm
5 Acres 13.75 11.53 445
5-15 Acres 26.31 27.02 545
15-25 Acres 7.56 10.50 736
25-50 Acres 4.70 8.53 963
50 Acres 2.28 9.35 2173
Borrowing Share of
households institution-
as percent al credit in
Type of Household of all total credit
and Size of Farm households (%)
in each
category
A. Farm
a. Owner 33.87 14.71
b. Owner-cum-Tenant 45.66 6.10
c. Tenant 47.89 3.03
Sub-Total: Cultivator
(All Sizes) 40.98 9.79
Owner non-operator 27.11 21.13
Sub-Total: All Farm
B. Non-Farm 26.91 6.95
C. Grand Total: All Rural 34.61 10.65
D. Size of Cultivator Farm
5 Acres 37.17 1.48
5-15 Acres 41.50 6.89
15-25 Acres 45.93 6.40
25-50 Acres 40.68 13.39
50 Acres 42.19 28.99
Borrowings for different
purposes as a percent of
total borrowings
Capital Working
Type of Household expenditure capital
and Size of Farm on farm expenditure
on farm
A. Farm
a. Owner 35.39 6.59
b. Owner-cum-Tenant 38.99 9.33
c. Tenant 27.49 12.29
Sub-Total: Cultivator
(All Sizes) 34.42 8.59
Owner non-operator 12.25 2.55
Sub-Total: All Farm
B. Non-Farm 8.22 0.16
C. Grand Total: All Rural 26.27 6.08
D. Size of Cultivator Farm
5 Acres 23.03 3.90
5-15 Acres 34.61 7.35
15-25 Acres 36.49 12.27
25-50 Acres 35.48 10.30
50 Acres 44.83 12.32
Borrowings for different
purposes as a percent of
total borrowings
Non-farm Consumption
Type of Household business including
and Size of Farm expenditure other non-
production
expenditure
A. Farm
a. Owner 11.31 46.70
b. Owner-cum-Tenant 4.11 47.58
c. Tenant 3.42 56.80
Sub-Total: Cultivator
(All Sizes) 7.71 49.29
Owner non-operator 7.71 42.08
Sub-Total: All Farm
B. Non-Farm 42.03 45.60
C. Grand Total: All Rural 19.92 47.73
D. Size of Cultivator Farm
5 Acres 11.79 61.39
5-15 Acres 5.78 52.27
15-25 Acres 5.48 45.57
25-50 Acres 7.65 46.55
50 Acres 10.79 31.96
Source: [2].
Table 2
Distribution of Average Rate of Interest and its Variance by
Source of Borrowings
Mean
Interest Rate
(Percent Standard
Credit Sources per Annum) Deviation
A. Institutional
Co-operative Societies 8.60 2.47
Cooperative Banks 8.68 2.28
A.D.B.P. 7.15 1.32
Commercial Banks 8.87 1.40
Taccavi 6.63 3.32
Unclassified 6.48 5.26
Sub-Total: A 8.16 1.82
B. Non-Institutional
Friends and Relatives 9.25 9.72
Professional Money-Lenders 18.53 12.99
Land-owners 10.25 9.35
Commission Agents and
Merchants 13.54 11.28
Factories 8.88 5.28
Unclassified 11.28 11.12
Sub-Total: B 15.34 11.63
All Sources: (A + B) 10.13 7.06
Source. [2].