Agricultural credit and conflict: Evidence from Myanmar

Joseph Goeb, Bart Minten, Nilar Aung and Hnin Ei Win

No 82, IFPRI working papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Abstract: Access to timely credit is widely viewed as an important determinant of improved agricultural investment and productivity. However, little is known about how agricultural credit markets function during prolonged conflict. This paper examines how conflict shapes both the receipt of agricultural credit and the provision of informal credit by agrifood businesses in Myanmar, where conflict has been widespread in after 2021. Using rare data from both farmers and firms, we document a substantial decline in formal credit after conflict, but stable receipt of informal credit. In conflict-affected areas, formal credit receipt declined sharply – most notably from government-supported schemes and from microfinance institutions – while informal credit was more resilient – especially from friends and family and agribusinesses. Using direct elicitation methods of credit constraint classifications, we show that farmers in high conflict areas are more likely to voluntarily withdraw from credit markets and shift to self-financing. On the supply side, conflict has insignificant relationships to farm-credit provision by input retailers and rice mills. Taken together, our findings highlight the informal segment of agricultural credit markets as an underappreciated source of resilience in conflict-affected settings.

Keywords: credit; conflicts; agricultural credit; access to finance; investment; Myanmar; Asia; South-eastern Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-29
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/183542

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fpr:ifprwp:183542

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IFPRI working papers from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().