EFFECT OF CREDIT ACCESSIBILITY AND RESOURCE UTILISATION ON FARM PERFORMANCE IN KYAUNG KONE TOWNSHIP (AYERWADDY DIVISION)

This study investigates the effect of credit accessibility and resource utilization on farm performance in Kyaung Kone Township, Ayerwaddy Division, Myanmar. The sample size is 150 farmer respondents (10% of total households) from 5 villages among the 65 villages in the Township, using two staged random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics were used to evaluate demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the respondents while multiple linear regressions analysis was used to analyze the effect on farm performance. The survey data indicates that almost all farmers get an agricultural credit from MADB and farmers are accessible to certain amount of agricultural credit with easiness, acceptable term and repayment scheme. Farmers spend more on resources like seeds and fairly on fertilizers and pesticides. For farming techniques, spending on land preparation, weeding and labour is more than that on machinery and soil analysis. Analyzing the effect on yield per acre, it is found that credit amount and easiness of borrowing has direct effect on yield per acre while the other variables have no significant outcome, and the spending on resources utilization also has a positive significant effect on yield per acre. The analysis of effect on annual farm income reveals that both the credit accessibility and resources utilization significantly increase the farm income accordingly. These explains adequate credit amount with easiness of borrowing and increased resource utilization can push up the yield per acre as well as annual farm income of farmers in Kyaung Kone Township