These challenges are related to seasonality of farming business and low population density in rural areas.
Lenders need to offer longer loan maturities and less frequent or irregular repayment installments to match the cash flow of borrowers.
Longer loan maturities and irregular repayment schedules are more risky and present additional challenges to liquidity management.
Agricultural sector depends significantly on external factors such as the weather, pest and disease outbreaks and prices of inputs and outputs, which are beyond the farmers' control.
Low population densities and poor infrastructure result in high transaction costs for rural financial service providers and for their clients.