Strengthening housing finance in emerging markets: the savings and credit cooperative organisation (SACCO) model in Kenya

Abstract

Savings have long been an essential source of funding for credit. Whether in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia or Latin America, community-based financial institutions have relied on deposits to make financial services accessible to moderate-income borrowers. Despite the foundational role savings and loans have had in financial sector development, emerging markets have largely overlooked the important role these institutions can have in providing shelter credit in their own contexts. Savings and Credit Cooperative Organisations (SACCOs) in the Republic of Kenya illustrate the potential model for deposit-based lending to deliver housing finance for many of the country’s underserved prospective borrowers. This study draws upon the experiences of several savings and loan associations in the industrialized world with applications towards improving the Kenyan SACCO model that provides the most extensive credit union loans on the African continent. The article concludes community finance institutions merit strong consideration towards helping overcome the housing finance sector underdevelopment too often experienced in the developing world.     

A cash-constrained stochastic inventory model with consumer loans and supplier credits: the case of nanostores in emerging markets

We consider a small traditional retailer that is managing its inventory under strict cash constraints, mainly because typically informal loans are offered to customers. These stores are widely present in emerging markets, and we refer to them as nanostores (also called ‘mom-and-pop stores’). As the suppliers require immediate payments for goods delivered, a nanostore can only replenish products to the level for which it has on-hand cash available. To improve delivery efficiency, a supplier might offer a nanostore credit for its replenishments. However, currently, suppliers are often reluctant to do so as these nanostores quickly go bankrupt or disappear, hence defaulting on all outstanding credits. The objective of this paper is to determine when it is beneficial to offer supplier credits. We propose a multi-period, stochastic inventory model, and numerically compare scenarios with and without supplier credits. Our study shows that even in the presence of this risk, suppliers often have good incentives to provide these credits, even if interest is not incurred. For this to hold, the operations of the retailer should be (a little) profitable in the first place, for which we provide analytical conditions.     

Two-echelon multi-product multi-constraint product returns inventory model with permissible delay in payments and variable lead time

Supply chain is not limited to delivering products to the end-costumers since the defective products that are returned back to the producers by the consumers. The producers should be superior knowledge to utilize the return products effectively so as to maintain our natural resources and to provide better service to customers. In this paper, a distributor and a warehouse consisting of a serviceable part and a recoverable part supply chain problem is considered in which there are several products, the distributor has limited space capacity and budget to purchase all products. In this supply chain, the defective products are returned back to the warehouse by the distributor and the warehouse recovered those defective products into perfect products having the same value as the procured products. The lead-time of receiving products from a warehouse to a distributor is a variable which is controllable by adding extra crashing cost. For each product, a fraction of the shortage is backordered and the rest are lost. A mathematical model is employed in this study for optimizing the order quantity, lead time and total number of deliveries with the objective of minimizing system total cost. We show that the model of this problem is a constrained non-linear programme and present a simple Lagrangian multiplier technique to solve it. Numerical and sensitivity analysis are given to show the applicability of the proposed model in real-world product returns inventory problems.     

Does social capital reduce entrepreneurs' petty corruption? Evidence across Indonesian regions

Petty corruption is a barrier to entrepreneurship in emerging countries, justifying to investigate its determinants. Using data on 1,240 entrepreneurs across Indonesian regions, we analyse the effects of social capital. Two-evel ordered probit regressions show that weak-ties discourage entrepreneurs' bribing, strong-ties encourage it, whereas this latter effect is moderated by the quality of access to formal credit. Bribing banks or turning to relatives for external funding are alternative solutions for entrepreneurs facing poor access to formal credit, a common feature in emerging countries, and the second solution is preferred given the risk and psychological costs of corruption.     

关于会计诚信建设的思考

会计信息是国家进行宏观调控和微观管理的重要资料来源，也是企业进行科学管理和准确预测、决策的主要依据。文章分析了会计信息失真和企业造假的原因及危害，并提出了会计诚信建设的几方面对策。     

我国矿业权人勘查开采信息公示工作进展、存在的问题及相关建议

矿业权人勘查开采信息公示制度自实施以来,对于落实矿业权人责任,加强诚信建设,提高政府监管效能发挥了重要作用。本文从2018年信息公示工作基本情况入手,介绍了信息公示工作的进展情况、取得的经验以及存在的问题等方面内容。在实际调查研究基础上,对做好信息公示工作提出了以下4点建议：完善信息公示附表；加强制度建设研究；完善公示系统；加强督导检查力度。     

中小矿业企业融资问题的多视角分析

中小矿业企业融资难是制约其发展的“瓶颈”，本文就中小矿业企业融资的现状，从中小矿业企业本身、金融机构、政府三个方面进行了剖析，找出具体原因并提出相应的解决措施。     

建筑市场信用信息平台建设的解析与思考

分析了建筑市场信用信息平台建设的意义,介绍了征信国家信用信息平台的三种模式:政府主导、会员制运作与市场化运作。在此基础上,提出了建筑市场信用信息平台建设的总体思路与基本内容,并对其建设的要点及后续工作进行了探讨。     

利用未确知测度评价建筑企业信用等级

分析了建筑企业信用等级的影响因素,建立了未确知测度模型,对其进行综合评价,采用信息熵的理论给出各影响因素的权重,应用一个实际例子说明了此模型的可行性。     

浅谈我国社会主义建筑市场的信用机制建设

介绍了西方发达国家的信用管理模式，分析了中国目前的信用制度建设状况，结合我国的建筑市场，提出了现阶段建筑市场的六大信用制度。