AbstractBlack farmers have historically been discriminated against in services from the federal government, including access to credit. Discrimination can take the form of delayed loan processing requests, which can affect timely planting, harvesting, feeding of livestock, and farm performance. This study uses nationwide, farm‐level data from 2009 to 2021 from the Farm Service Agency's direct farm loan program to investigate racial discrimination in the farm loan program. Findings reveal loan processing times average longer for Black borrowers on operating loans, though with a substantial state‐level variation. Specifically, it takes an average of more than two additional days for Black farmers' operating loan applications to be completed and another two additional days to be processed. However, there was no significant difference in time for farm ownership loans suggesting a more nuanced cause than outright racial discrimination. Other factors that increased loan processing time for borrowers included larger loan amounts, more complex loan types, a mix of collateral, and being a new borrower.
The performance of the Fertilizer Loan Assistance Program (FLAP) for rice farmers of the Municipal Government of Nasugbu, Batangas was evaluated. This study aimed to describe the Fertilizer Loan Assistance Program in terms of its objectives, organizational structure, functions and operating procedures, to determine the growth of financial resources and collection rate of the loan assistance program, to determine the level of fertilizer use of farmer-beneficiaries, to compare the actual amount of fertilizers lent to farmer-beneficiaries with the recommended amount of fertilizers per cropping season and to determine the satisfaction level of the beneficiaries with regard to the assistance program. Three aspects determined the program's efficiency and sustainability, namely, operational efficiency, financial viability, and farm level impact. Under the operational efficiency, the systems and procedures of the program in providing loans was evaluated together with the FLAP's organizational set-up. The financial viability aspect determined the source and growth of financial resources, and the loan collection performance. The farm level impact focused on the growth of farmer-beneficiaries, availability of fertilizer stocks, satisfaction level of beneficiaries on FLAP's services and operating system, and the comparison of the amount of fertilizer required to apply on rice farms per cropping season in Nasugbu and the actual amount lent to farmer-beneficiaries by FLAP. All of these were accomplished with the use of primary data from interviews with 30 randomly selected farmer-beneficiaries using pre-tested questionnaires and secondary data from the Municipal Agriculture Office. The criteria in choosing farmer-beneficiaries, loanable amount, loan application and requirements, loan processing and release, monitoring of the beneficiaries, penalties and legal concerns, and documentation were the areas studied under the systems and procedures of the loan program. The FLAP's loan collection performance was evaluated using Collection Rate and Average Collection Period. The average collection rate of the loan program from 2008- 2012 was 79% and the average collection period (ACP) of the program within five years was 253.29 days. The ACP value reflects that there were some problems in the program's loan collection. The farm level impact includes the growth of farmer-beneficiaries. The largest number of beneficiaries was recorded in 2010 with 96 beneficiaries. On the average, FLAP has 72 farmer-beneficiaries. Moreover, the actual amount of fertilizers lent to farmer-beneficiaries was not able to meet the amount of fertilizers needed by the farmers. The amount of fertilizer that can be lent to farmers mostly depends on the availability of stocks at the Municipal Agriculture Office (MAO). The farmer-beneficiaries' evaluation of FLAP was based on some criteria. The farmer-respondents gave a positive response with regard to the loan processing, bags of fertilizer provided and the loan maturity of the loan program. 77% of the farmer- beneficiaries said that they were satisfied on the loan program. In general, the results of this study indicate that the Fertilizer Loan Assistance Program (FLAP) for rice farmers of the municipal government of Nasugbu, Batangas was accessible and helpful to farmer-borrowers but not efficient in its loan collection.
An experiment was conducted to investigate the various conditions under which political expertise (or prior knowledge in the general political domain) and affect (positive or negative feelings) might interact with each other in shaping the cognitive strategies that people employ in forming reactions to newspaper stories. Two hundred six subjects from a major midwestern university were randomly assigned to a positive affect or a negative affect condition to read an article about either a proposed change in the state of Michigan's student loan program or the proposed deputization of campus police. A thought-listing procedure was employed to analyze subjects' reactions to the articles. In line with expectations, political expertise emerged as an important contributor to analytic processing of the news articles (measured by the generation of total thoughts, issue-relevant thoughts, and arguments). Predicted main effects of affective valence were not observed, but an interaction between expertise and affect was found. Political experts, but not novices, generated more issue-relevant thoughts in the negative affect condition. Implications of these results for political communication research (e.g., campaign effects) are discussed.
Banks have an important role in realizing SDGs, therefore the Bank must continue to develop its products and services to be directed towards sustainable economic activities and not too exploring resources. Based on The Appendix of the President Decree No. 59/2017 the Indonesian government directed the global target of economies inclusive regarding the participation of the financial services sector. The Banks will support the priority economic sectors development such as agriculture, processing industries, and infrastructure, Micro, Small, Medium Enterprises and Energy. Banks can participate by using a green loan policy. This research is a normative legal research, which focuses on examining the application of the rules or norms in positive law. The result is the Banks play a key role in society, banks have purpose to help develop sustainable economies and to empower people to build better futures. When banks will give a credit to those who have a business that has a direct impact to the environment, bank also can be offer a position as a manager of environmental recovery guarantee funds. In other side, Banks can provide green development, in a process of giving credit to the debtor; banks need to pay attention to the business legality of prospective debtors. Banks are required to ensure that prospective customers have a legal business and comply with all relevant laws and regulations.
Seafood processing industry including companies and households accounts for 35% of Mekong delta's total agricultural output. The former mainly concentrates on exports; their processing activities are required and supervised to meet manycriteria of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility by foreign importers. Meanwhile, the latter's production is for the local market; its processing activities mainly rely on experience and surrounding environment.This study focuses on sustainability of households' seafood processing activities with three pillars including economic, social and environmental ones. The research sample of 300 households was collected in 6 provinces of Mekong deltaincluding Ben Tre, Ca Mau, Tien Giang, Dong Thap, Tra Vinh, Bac Lieu in July 2014. Research findings show that from the economic perspective, physical facilities are outdated; revenues and profits are not stable and household havemore difficulties in collecting materials, obtaining loans for their business and selling their products. In addition, from social perspective, the average income for seasonal workers is at low levels with 60% paid from 50 - 80 thousands VNDper day and 70% of surveyed households have members and seasonal workers suffering from syndromes of work-related diseases including sinusitis, rheumatism, dermatology, eye itching. Moreover, the environment surrounding seafood processing households is seriously polluted with 71% of households discharging untreated wastewater into nearby seas, rivers and canals and disposing solid wastes around their houses. Therefore, 80% of households fail to control and kill insects such as flies and bluebottles in their processing area, especially up to 50% failing to know the origins of anti-insect chemistries used. Based on these findings, this paper delivers implications and recommendations for the local government and households to improve the sustainability of households' seafood processing activities in Mekong delta.
The country's macroeconomic conditions, whether directly and indirectly will influence the development of the financial and banking sector. This study aims to determine the effect of macroeconomic and internal company variables consisting of BOPO, ROA, money supply, and the unemployment rate on non-performing loans (NPL) in Indonesian banking, especially Regional Development Banks (BPD). The sampling technique used is purposive sampling technique. There are 20 Regional Development Banks (BPD) that met the requirements determined by the observation period from 2008-2021. The data processing method used is panel data regression. Model selection uses the Chow test, Hausman test and Langgrange Multiplier test (LM Test). Based on this, the appropriate model is the Fixed Effect Model (FEM). Testing the classical assumptions of FEM shows that there is a heteroscedasticity problem, then it is recovered using the Feasible Generalized Least Square (FGLS). The results of the analysis show that the variables BOPO, ROA, money supply, and unemployment rates both simultaneously and individually have a significant positive effect on the NPL of Regional Development Banks.
This study applied the paired t-test and logistic regression analysis to assess the impacts of the rural SACCOS' loans on borrowers in Tanzania where 431 borrowers from 37 rural SACCOS in Morogoro, Dodoma and Kilimanjaro regions were involved. The study noted that 73.5% of the rural SACCOS' borrowers in Tanzania (P<0.01) realized the improvement of their livelihood on education and health, physical assets, crop yields and business capital. The study registered the increase of 50% to 200% of minimum and maximum value of the impacts variables after taking loans and the study noted that the high impacts of loans and low default rate for borrowers were positively related. This study recommends the following: borrowers should use credits risks mitigation techniques to reduce the amount of defaulted loans such as covering their business activities with insurance to minimize the credits risks, use loans according to the conditions stipulated in contracts, avoids multiple borrowing and the SACCOS should be keen in processing and followup of overdue loans. Moreover, the supervisory and regulatory role played by government of Tanzania to promote the rural SACCOS should be sustained.
A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO's 2001 report on major challenges at the Small Business Administration (SBA) addressed lender oversight, the 8(a) program for small disadvantaged businesses, disaster loan processing, and other issues. The information GAO presents in this report is intended to help sustain congressional attention and SBA's focus on addressing these challenges. This report is part of a special series of reports on governmentwide and agency-specific issues."
A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insures billions of dollars in multifamily housing mortgage loans to help construct, rehabilitate, purchase, and refinance apartments and health care facilities. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) lacks assurances that the lenders approved for the Multifamily Accelerated Processing (MAP) program always meet all of HUD's qualifications. HUD's guidance requires prospective lenders to submit documents showing that they are financially sound, have a satisfactory lending record, and have qualified underwriters. GAO found that HUD did not always comply with, or effectively implement, controls and procedures for reviewing and monitoring MAP lenders' underwriting of loans. Before issuing a loan, field staff are required to conduct and document reviews of lenders' mortgage insurance applications and associated loan exhibits to ensure compliance with HUD underwriting requirements. However, staff did not always properly document their reviews. HUD has held some lenders accountable for specific violations of program requirements but is unable to systematically identify lenders that exhibit patterns of noncompliance. To hold lenders accountable for specific violations or for patterns of noncompliance, HUD's Office of Multifamily Housing can suspend or terminate their ability to participate in the MAP program."
The gari enterprise is a catalyst for economic progress and a route out of poverty as it is a major staple food for many Ghanaians. Despite the problems confronting gari enterprises, it has attracted less attention. As such, this study aims to explore the problems facing gari enterprises in the West Gonja Municipality of Ghana. The case study design was adopted for the study. The sample size comprised 30 participants who were engaged in gari enterprises. Interview and observation guides were used to collect data, whereas thematic analysis and pairwise ranking were used to analyse the data. The results showed that gari enterprises faced internal problems covering, technology adoption, and marketing problems, while external problems encountered included funding and poor infrastructure. However, production problems emerged as the most predominant. In general, both internal and external problems undoubtedly influenced the operation of the gari enterprise. To overcome these problems, gari enterprises should acquire and use modern equipment for production, develop their human capital, and secure affordable loans.
