Comparative Research on Roles of Social Capital in Rural Finance in Asia

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Development issue can be identified as the issue of the combination of market forces and government polices. If market forces are overemphasized, then there will the problem of market failure, and if we adopt policies for alleviating market failure, we have another problem of government failure. Both have the merits and demerits, and hence intermediate way using community function is now introduced. Since trust accumulated through personal interaction in the community has many strengthens in resource management, smoothing transaction and so on. This research aims at examining roles of so-called social capital in rural finance based on field studies in selected Asian countries.Research results consist of two parts, i.e., the analysis on roles of community on microfinance (MF), and the analysis of labor exchange system.Concerning the former point, we discussed the present state and constraints of MF with special references to the function of group lending. The general tend of MF in Asian … More countries is analyzed in the first paper. Based on this review, field studies in selected Asian countries, including Vietnam, Bangladesh, and Philippines were conducted. Group lending using community function is generally very effective in loan provision of MF. There are two related findings. First, in Vietnam, communes are very powerful in selecting good borrowers, reducing transaction costs, and enforcement of repayment. At the same time, since communes are allowed to have discretionary powers, loans do not always go to the most needed customers. Second, the change in operation system of Grameen Bank is important. In the new system loan provision through group is done without joint liability, and this change in operation was found rational to a certain degree, reflecting the change in roles of group in a process of economic development. The switch from group lending to individual lending was observed in case of CARD, MF institution, in the Philippines.With respect to the latter task, the cooperative work system in Hateruma Island, Okinawa, and that of Cambodia is analyzed based on in-depth field study. The analysis reveals that there existed social capital in cooperative work system, but the function had changed due to changes in economic situation Less