文档介绍：ACCESS TO FINANCE
THROUGH VALUE CHAINS:
Lessons from Rwanda
Straton Habyalimana The author acknowledges the insights and assistance provided by SNV Rwanda Production e and Employment team members (particularly François Sihimbiro and Fidèle Nsengiyumva), as well as by Dr Charles Nach Mback and Dr Shirley Randell; managers, staff and clients of financial institutions surveyed, and various participants in value chains interviewed. The views and any errors contained in the paper are the author’s alone.
, SNV Rwanda, shabyarimana@
ABSTRACT
Financial services play a catalytic role in poverty reduction. In Rwanda, access to finance remains, to some extent, a privilege of those living in urban and semi-urban areas. This study highlights the potential value chains bear in terms of expanding and deepening access to formal finance in Rwandan rural areas, and the constraints limiting this access. A number of lessons learned are presented on how these constraints could be e.
1. INTRODUCTION
Access to finance is important for poor households to take advantage of new business opportunities, expand e-generating activities, and cope with shocks and life cycle events. Poor people, particularly those living in rural areas, need savings, credit, cash transfer, and insurance services in the same way as others who are not living in poverty do.
In Rwanda, as is generally the case in developing countries, such services remain mostly a privilege of those living in cities and outreach of financial services in rural areas is still very low. As an example, less than 6 percent of rural dwellers hold a saving account in a formal finance institution (MINECOFIN 2007). Informal finance is so popular that 73 percent of total population reported using informal loans in 2005 (see table 4 in Annex 1). The risk inherent in doing business in rural areas-be it in agriculture or off-farm activities-due to asymmetry of information, was identified as the most important factor that cause