Bøger af Abdeljalil Ahmed

Rural households in Libya are credit constrained, in terms of access and the amount ofcredit received. Formal banks are the main players in credit market. Despite 44 branchesof agricultural banks distributed countrywide, these branches offer a limited number ofcredit for different purposes every year. The shares of these branches in rural creditmarket are quite small: agricultural banks provide only 24 % of loans and the otherbanks, mainly the commercial banks, provide 76 % of loans. However, agriculturalcredits provided by agricultural banks offer the most favorable terms for thosehouseholds that have a positive demand on agricultural credit. Households that have noaccess to agricultural credits on the other hand face the problem of paying a higherinterest rate when applying for credit from non-agricultural banks. This study is aninvestigation on ¿the importance of large credits in Libyan rural-areas, and the mainplayers in the rural-credit market¿. This study determines factors affecting access andcredit applications in three different locations. In addition, the affect of households, land,and socio-economic characteristics are analyzed using econometric analysis based onprimary data collected during field research in the years 2006 and 2007. Empiricalresults from the data collected from three different regions in Libya confirm that morethan half of rural households have no access to credit and around 42% of ruralhouseholds do not want to participate in loan borrowing or take loans from any financialinstitutions that charge high interest rate. This is mostly due to religious considerationsthat prohibit ¿unethical¿ interest rates charged by banks.