Impact of microcredit on the household income and expenditure of the fish farmers: Bangladesh perspective

Abstract

Abstract Access to credit is a major limitation for small-scale fish farmers in Bangladesh in pursuing their fish farming activities. One attempted remedy is that NGOs have created microcredit facilities to address this limitation. This study empirically assesses the impact of microcredit on the economic welfare of the poor fish farmers in the Mymensingh district of Bangladesh. Opinions of the fish farmers toward their economic well-being under microcredit programs have also been assessed by using the Binary Logistic Regression technique. Our empirical findings support the existing literature that access to credit can significantly contribute to the expansion of the economic welfare of the fish farmers in terms of household income and expenditure. Furthermore, our study demonstrates that an overwhelming proportion of the fish farmers has expressed satisfaction toward microcredit programs for uplifting their living-standard on economic indicators.