ABSTRACT

Various authors have demonstrated that credit and rural development are linked; in México's case, there are diverse banking systems that seek to cover the demands for rural and agricultural/livestock credit. The objective of this research was to analyze the distribution of credits that development banks offered through Financiera Rural (FR, Rural Financial) from 2003 to 2010, with the purpose of understanding the degree to which credits have been destined to the development of rural areas, and using the municipality as the observation unit. A Cluster Analysis was performed, using levels of marginalization, accessibility, rurality, and total financing in the 2454 municipalities in México. With this tool, 14 groups were defined. Results show that: a) 41% of the credits FR has granted have been destined to 122 municipalities, considered as metropolitan urban; b) 991 municipalities considered as disperse rural, and 987 as semi-urban rural have only received 4% and 23% of the 103 503.20 million pesos exercised by the FR. We conclude that it is necessary to reorient the development banking's credit distribution toward rural areas.

Keywords: Accessibility, development banking, marginality, municipality, rurality