Assessment of saving behaviour of clients of Buusaa Gonofaa micro-finance institution

Abstract

Like many other MFIs in Ethiopia and elsewhere Busa Gonofa Micro-finance Institution (BG MFI) is a credit driven organization. After experiencing delivery of micro-credit service for more than a decade, the organization commenced delivery of saving service to the public since the year 2012. Much is not well understood about saving behavior of clients of the organization which is the basis of delivery of the services. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to assess saving behavior of clients of BG MFI from different perspectives; including demographic, socio-economic, and institutional. A multi staged stratified random sampling technique has been used to select a total of 385 respondents from four branches operating in different geographic locations. Both secondary and primary data sources were used to gather relevant information. A structured questionnaire was designed by the researcher. An in-depth interview of all sample clients was administered through trained credit officers. Each respondent’s saving balance has been collected from secondary data source of BG MFI. The data has been analyzed through SPSS software. The findings of this study indicate that average saving balance of urban clients is higher than rural clients. Single (unmarried) client’s average saving balance is also larger than married once and educated clients save more than uneducated clients. Saver only (nonborrower) client’s average saving balance is larger than their counterpart borrower clients. It has been noticed that clients with higher income had quite higher saving balances than those with little income groups. BG needs to create more access privilege to the many un-served low income households through physical expansion of branch offices or other innovative mechanisms such as mobile banking and agent banking models. The organization shall increase the scope of its door-step marketing strategy to promote its service to the public at large as many are not well aware about microfinance institution in general and BG MFI in particular. The association of microfinance institution (AEMFI) might play a role in promoting MFIs and their services to the public through the use of different media.