The effects of financial liberalisation on access to credit by
Ghanaian households

Abstract

This research specifically investigates the factors that influenced access by households and individuals to credit in the financial sector in Ghana, using the Ghana Living Standards Survey for years 1988/89, 1991192 and 1998/99. The research sheds light on the extent at which the financial liberalisation policy has affected households and individuals in accessing credit with the view of improving their standard of living. In this research, two sources of credit are identified. Formal credit including debts from commercial banks and other financial institutions; and informal credit including debts from relatives and friends, traders, and moneylenders.

Probit, Heckman probit with sample selection, multinomial logit, seemingly unrelated regression estimates and treatment effects models were used for the analytical work. The results suggest that the different characteristics of households and individuals affect access to credit and these have changed over the time with the implementation of the financial Iiberalisation policy. An additional result shows that the consumption pattern of households changes with access to credit.

At both the national and rural community level, the analysis of the data revealed that you are more likely to access credit the older you are, the larger your household size and if you owned a house. You are more likely to access credit (whether formal or informal) if you were a professional or in an administrative job and married. However, the farther away you live from a bank, the less likely you are to access credit but surprisingly the more likely you are to access credit if you live farther away from a market. On the effects of access to credit on the consumption pattern of households, the results showed that households with access to credit improve on their consumption pattern by consuming more non-food items. The results suggest that there is need to address key factors that inhibit access to credit by micro-economic units that would facilitate economic growth and development.