{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.013772749631087064, 'fraction_numerical': 0.017707820954254796, 'mean_word_length': 5.089820359281437, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Measuring Farmers Constraints in Accessing Bank Credit Through the Agricultural Credit Guarantee Scheme Fund in Nigeria

Lending financial institutions are noted for almost over relying on collateral for lending and to reduce the problems of farmers and the SMEs the ACGSF was established. The objective of a guarantee scheme is to enable capital constrained but viable projects with inadequate or unacceptable collateral enjoy loan facilities from the banks. Over the years the scheme has not proved effective leading to the establishment of other guarantee schemes such as the Small and Medium, Enterprises Credit Guarantee Scheme to improve finance inclusion for the vast majority of farmers and SMEs who lack collateral security. Guarantees are designed to remedy situations in which borrowers with an equal probability of default have an unequal probability of obtaining credit due to insufficient collateral. Despite government efforts at promoting and enhancing the competitiveness of agricultural production under the broad umbrella of micro, small and medium enterprises banks still fail to lend sufficiently to the sector due to several constraints. Prominent among the constraints are the matters of security and the lack of financial identity which are key risk management tools in financial inclusion schemes like credit guarantees. Again, because of the low literacy levels of farmers and SMEs, operators and lack of acceptable methods of accessing credit they are excluded from obtaining credit for their businesses. To this extent, banks fail to even meet the lending targets set by themselves for the agricultural sector. This situation has led to the very poor contribution of the sector to the GDP, which steadily crashed from 3.0 percent in 2007, through 2.8 percent, in 2008, 2.5 percent in 2009, 2.4 percent in 2010, 2.3 percent in 2011, to 1.6 percent in 2012. The study adopted the survey method and it was found that farmers and SMEs have difficulty in accessing credit from banks due to several constraints.