ABSTRACT

The research was designed to evaluate the activities and problems of supervised agricultural credit scheme in Abia State. The specific objectives of the study include to determine the socioeConOn1ic factors, to examine the activities of the scheme with reference to its mandate given and the evaluation of the performance of the scheme based on loan disbursement. The analysis was based on time series data. Two sets of questionnaire were administered. The first set was administered to farmer loan beneficiaries in the

study area and the second set, to the staff of the supervised agricultural credit scheme. The simple statistical tools such as percentages, frequency tables and differences in mean were used in the analysis. The activities of the scheme (with reference to the type of agricultural enterprise covered by the scheme) are to encourage hanks in releasing funds to agriculture and to enable the farmers benefit from agricultural credit, to advice farmers' activities. ie by supervising the farmers, it will make them to be serious and work hard so that they can repay the loans collected, to grant loans to farmers for agricultural purposes and to help them get loans from other sources. The problems encountered include those associated with unstable government policies, delay in approval of loans, inability to provide adequate security, problem of high interest rate. The recommendation is that loans should be made available to the scheme at the right time so that their activities would be screened and loan beneficiaries should be encouraged to repay their loans at the appropriate time.