The poverty incidence of families in the country, that is, the total number of families that can be considered poor had declined from 44.2 percent in 1985 to 39.9 percent in 1991 to 33.7 percent in 2000. However these figures may only convey part of the story about poverty in the country. It is well acknowledged that poverty is multidimensional. Thus, it is also worth investigating the assets of the poor because without a doubt, both income and assets are essential measures of well being of the households.
This paper examines the extent of asset accumulation and saving of the households from the credit they obtained from community-oriented financial intermediaries (COFIs) and other financial sources. In the process, this paper also investigates how the government can assist in asset development, particularly for the poor households. Results show that that there is a clear difference between the client households and nonclient households in terms of asset ownership, access to credit and the use of the loans obtained. Specifically, the results reveal that client households have greater accumulation of assets and, thus, have the benefit of obtaining greater advantages of having more asset accumulation than nonclient households. Also, only client households allot a share from their obtained credit to buy a real estate asset. Meanwhile, from the credit obtained, nonclient households have higher allocation for the current regular needs of the households and for servicing another credit but lower allocation on savings than client households. This suggests that nonclient households’ obtained credit is used primarily for immediate needs than investing in asset accumulation.