Influence of the Socio-economic Factors on the Credit Accessibility of Micro Level Poultry Farming Households in Peninsular-Jaffna

Abstract

The civil unrest of the recent past destroyed the life style of the people, while decimating the infrastructure and rendering robust and persevering people disabled and dead. Consequently, in many households' women being weak and vulnerable. nevertheless had to take the place of breadwinners. In light of this, the attempt of this study is to determine their need, their limitations and their opportunities to make their enterprises successful. These female who engaged in poultry farming. would do well with financial help to make their farms large enough to yield substantially, for both maintenance of the industry, and the home. To this end the endeavor is to identify and address the locations critical to the venture making required adjustments to help with smooth and profitable functioning. In peninsular Jaffna, it is seen that among smallholder enterprises poultry farming is a popular industry. Applying the purposive Random Sampling method. 147 enterprises were selected which had 100 to 200 birds each, there being either male or female entrepreneurs. Consequently, through observation and interview, required data were gathered administering a pretested-structured questionnaire. Normality of the data was checked and the outliers were dropped. The probit regression analysis was carried out using STATA statistical software and the coefficients were estimated. Regression diagnostic test was performed to check for any violations in the basic assumptions. The researchers used marginal effects of the variables to interpret significant regression coefficients. Analysis revealed that experience (0.008803) of the household head, age (0.02533) and education (0.063392) of household head, labour hours (0.072753) and capital utility (0.001778) were significantly and positively affected credit accessibility of the entrepreneurs at Ipercent. 10 percent. 10 percent. 10 percentand 5 percent probability levels respectively, while profitability index (-0.122385) was significant at 5% probability levels and affected credit accessibility negatively. From the above results and contemporary ground reality observed, among the female headed poultry enterprises, research recommends a well-structured comprehensive training program in all aspects, covering poultry production, management and marketing by recognized organizations such as NGOs or the Department of Animal production and Health coupled with accessibility for formal credit should enable them to be successful entrepreneurs.