Mapping and Manipulation of Traders in Sri Lanka

Explores financial intermediaries in Sri Lanka within the specific context of a set of government interventions during the early 1970s. Aims to explain the changing credit relations of borrowers and lenders in a small rural commercial centre. Range of issues examined includes:

• Context of policy discourse against private traders/merchants who lend money;
• Agro-ecological context of two main agricultural crops, paddy and coconut;
• National economic context;
• The role of credit when saving becomes difficult and there are fluctuating imbalances between income and expenditure;
• Sources of credit for production and consumption;
• Mutual dependence between traders and households;
• Shopkeepers changing relations with customers, strategies for securing customers and moral obligations to give credit.

States that the multiple and changing contextual factors of every financial landscape must be taken into account if effective credit interventions are to be implemented.