Rural or agricultural?
Are financial institutions aware of the thin line between agricultural lending and rural lending? Why are they surpassed to see that farmers and their families use loans extended under an agricultural lending programme for ‘other’ things than what ‘the institution had in mind for them’? The receiving family uses it temporarily to pay the school fees for their children or medicine for a sick member of the family. Later on, they buy goods they can sell again on the marker, and a few months after the loans were handed over, they start ploughing, sowing and later on harvesting. So yes, they use it eventually for agriculture. Over time we may observe that they are physically, mentally, socially and a few months later even economically healthy. But would it not be fair to gibe such financing the label ‘rural finance’? For sure then an evaluator will conclude that the programme was very successful ….