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About the Authors

Lack of credit access is severe in low income and poor families that are normally considered to have fewer opportunities to borrow from banks due to insufficient valuable assets for collateral. These low-income households face limited opportunity to acquire new technology and working capital for agricultural production and thus tend to fall behind. As a result, providing access to finance to low-income rural households has been considered an important component of any rural development strategy.

Microfinance programmes, in particular, have been gradually embedded in national strategies of many developing countries as they are poverty-focused. They aim to facilitate the access to financial services such as credit for the poor who are usually disadvantaged in terms of access to conventional financial services from formal financial institutions. The objective of this book is to provide an overview of microfinance programmes in Asia focusing in particular on the determinants of the accessibility of rural households to microcredit. The book studies seven Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh with two specific case studies.
Christopher Gan is the Professor of Accounting and Finance at Lincoln University, New Zealand. He earned his PhD in Agricultural Economics (with a specialisation in rural finance) from Louisiana State University, his Master of Economics and Trade from Indiana State University, and his Bachelor of Arts in Economic Development from Warren Wilson College, the United States.

Gilbert V Nartea is Associate Professor of Finance at The University of Waikato, New Zealand. He has a PhD in agricultural economics (specialization in finance) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Master in Economics from the University of New England, Australia, and B S Agribusiness Management (cum laude) from the University of the Philippines.

Authors

Microfinance In Asia