There is a good reason to justify the support for small and microenterprise development. At this point, what is more important is the formulation of research agenda that will facilitate the introduction of new insights into the sector’s development. This paper provides a background to the...

This paper reviews the monetary and credit policies that directly or indirectly bear on the rise and fall of informal credit markets. It also describes the responses of the formal financial sector to the challenges of the informal sector and/or the opportunities in the financial markets.

This paper has reviewed existing policies and programs to encourage banks to expand their financial services to micro, small- and medium-sized enterprises (MicSMEs) and poor households. The overall policy environment for promoting microfinance in the Philippines has indeed considerably improved...

This paper integrates the major results of the various studies on urban informal credit markets (ICMs). While the terms of references cover a wide range of topics, the peculiar characteristics of the Philippine financial system and the limited budget for the study preclude the study from...

Do guarantee programs lead to additionality in agricultural lending? Do guarantee programs contribute to small loans? Do guarantee programs encourage banks to use their own funds? Do guarantee programs reduce the cost of lending to banks and how cost effective are the guarantee programs? These...

Utilizing time-wise autoregressive model to investigate the perception of the international community on the Philippines, which has suffered from debt crisis in 1982, indicates that banker’s creditworthiness assessments are sensitive not only from liquidity and solvency but also from long-term...

This article is part of the seminar-workshop on the “Consequences of Small Farm Mechanization on Production, Employment and Incomes in the Philippines” sponsored jointly by the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Economic and Development Authority, the Philippine Institute for Development...

Despite deregulation of the financial markets such as liberalization of foreign bank entry and branching, the government continues to directly intervene in the credit markets through several special credit programs. In the effort to restructure the economy, the government has availed the...

This article analyzes how a credit guarantee confers private benefits to creditors and proposes reform policies and related assessment measures in order to make credit guarantee a socially beneficial intermediation instrument. Analysis indicates that the necessary and sufficient conditions for...

To evaluate the effectiveness of approaches to improve policies toward the development of small and medium enterprises, this article assesses the efficiency of directed credit programs and the impact of a liberalized design of a specific project.