Does institution type affect access to finance for cassava actors in Nigeria?

The cassava system in Nigeria is developing, with increasing attention to its potential positive outcomes. However, credit access is a major problem in expanding productive activities of the different actors across the value chains of cassava products. This study investigates the extent of access to credit by cassava actors with respect to the different financial institutions in the country using data obtained from a sample of 168 actors, including producers, processors, marketers, fabricators and end users. The study found that commercial banks had the highest disbursement rate (88.0%) despite higher interest rate charged, while government banks had the least (73.6%). Processors (79.5%) and marketers (79.4%) had highest credit access rate while fabricators (67.5%) had the least. Regression results revealed that cassava actors that patronized commercial banks particularly those who are medium scale had access to higher amount of credit. However, female actors and those using cooperative banks secured lower credit amount. In line with the results, Nigeria should champion private-sector-led credit provision through appropriate policies aimed at improving the capacity of the institutions. Financial institutions should be strengthened for better credit access by the cassava actors, and hence improve their productivity

Poverty Effects of Minimum Wage Increase in Nigeria

This paper examined the influence of Minimum wage (MW) increase on poverty level of households whose heads were in formal employment and the spillover effect on those in informal employment. It assessed distribution of real per capita household expenditure (PCPHE) and real monthly wage of workers in the two sectors. Fuzzy set approach was used to estimate multidimensional poverty (MDP) index of the population which served as poverty line and the poverty rate of households which was utilized as regressand in Instrumental Variable (IV) regression, with real monthly wage as key regressor. The study also estimated MW coverage and percentage of low-wage earners in poor and non-poor households. The results showed that PCPHE did not reflect wage gains observed after MW increase in the sectors but there was slight reduction in poverty level. Formal sector workers were poorer than those in informal sector and poverty worsened for public sector employees after MW increase compared to employees in private sector. The implication of the result is that MW should not be the sole redistributive policy in the formal sector and its increase should only form part of a comprehensive national economic development strategy. Keywords: Employment, fuzzy set, instrumental variable, minimum wage, multidimensional poverty. DOI: 10.7176/DCS/9-11-03 Publication date: November 30th 201