Analysis of Formal Micro-Credit Utilization for Rice Technologies Adoption in South East Nigeria

Analysis of formal micro-credit utilization for rice technologies adoption was carried out in southeast Nigeria. The study employed a systematic random sampling technique in the selection of the 360 respondents that was used for the study. Primary data used for the study were collected through the use of well structured questionnaire that was administered to the 360 systematically selected respondents. Descriptive statistics was used to analyze the study objectives. The result of the analysis showed that 66.1 % of the beneficiaries did not utilize the entire amount acquired for rice technologies adoption as about 21.0 % utilized the entire amount acquired for rice technologies adoption while about 13 % of the beneficiaries did not utilize any of the amount acquired for rice technologies adoption. The study also showed that the major areas where the micro-credits were utilized were for fertilizer, improved seeds, agro-chemicals, land preparation technologies, rice processing technologies, crop protection technologies and planting techniques. However, the result of the analysis revealed that the major areas where the acquired loans were utilized other than the proposed area (rice technology adoption) was for household consumption, renting of land for agricultural purposes and non-farm economic activities. Based on the findings, it was recommended that micro-credit disbursed to farmers for rice technologies adoption should be properly monitored and supervised in order to encourage them to fully utilize it on the specified area in which it was approved. This would help to increase the outputs and productivities of rice thereby leading to actualization one of the Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty in Nigeria by 2020.