Factors Influencing Women’s Access to Microfinance Loans in Bauchi State, Nigeria

Background and Objective: Access to finance is one of the major factors impeding the growth of women-owned businesses in Nigeria. It has been ascertained that the improvement of the socio-economic status of women is dependent on their access to credit. This study, therefore, analyzed factors influencing women’s access to microfinance loans in Bauchi State, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A multistage sampling procedure was employed in sampling 490 respondents, 360 loan beneficiaries and 130 non-beneficiaries. Data were collected through the use of a questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics and logit regression. The significance levels at which the results were obtained include p<0.01, p<0.05 and p<0.10. Results: The results revealed mean age of the respondents was 41.63 years for beneficiaries and 41.64 years for non-beneficiaries. Most (84.2%) of loan beneficiaries and 73.8% of non-beneficiaries were married with a mean household size of 9 and 18 persons, respectively. The results also revealed that all the respondents were small-scale producers, with an average of 14 years of experience. Factors influencing access to loans were, age, education and years of experience, all are significant (p<0.01). Beneficiaries reported short loan terms (86.1%), inadequate loan amount (57.5%) and high-interest rates (56.4%) as major constraints in accessing loans. Conclusion: The factors that influenced access to loans were age, household size and education of the women in the study area.