This paper briefly reviews various stages of development and experience of rural finance in the Philippines over more than three decades - from a policy environment characterized by credit subsidies, credit allocations and loan targeting in the seventies to a liberalized and deregulated financial market starting in the eighties; and other financial reforms introduced through the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act of 1998 and onwards. The paper also discusses the current policy thrusts of the government in order to increase and sustain the flow of credit to the agriculture sector.
