Abstract:
CARE reached and signed a tripartite agreement with Addis Credit and Saving Institution
(ADCSI) to provide financial services for the targeted low income women who are engaged in
small business and supported under CARE Ethiopia project however, it wasn’t successful as
intended. Therefore, the study study was conducted with the obective of assessing the Challenges
and opportunities of low income women for accessing loan focused only on the low income
women at kirkos subcity woreda 9 and 10 supported by CARE Ethiopia. In order to achieve this
objective, primarily data were collected from 284 randomly selected from total population of 987
low income women targeted by CARE Ethiopia. Moreover secondary data were obtained from
CARE Ethiopia reports. For the data analysis, descriptive statistics including mean, frequency
and percentages were used. Qualitative research approaches were used to collect data using
structured questionnaire and interviews. The findings of the study reveal that the major
opportunities which addressed in this study were, the availability of loan in Micro finance
institutions, government special funding through Addis saving and credit institution allocated for
poverty reduction and alleviation through supporting the marginalized women and youth,
support on market linkage, or a credit special support of women entrepreneurs on creating
business network and market linkage however they were challenged to take the available loan
due to lack of misunderstanding rule and regulation of the institution, payback period, low
amount of loan approval, problem of providing guarantee and collateral, interest rate is
perceived as high and due to lack of understanding in some community members demotivated
from taking loan. Based on thus the researcher recommends Financial institution, government
and non-government institution which working to support low income womento improve their life
should provides intensive awareness raising and trainings to improve understanding of the
community towards loan access. Addis saving and credit institution to present or explain their
rules and regulations of survice provision in a way clients easily understand, conduct continous
market analysis on interest rate loan repayment period and related isssue, plus consider the
increase of loan amount.
