IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05714440.html

Financial Literacy and Access to Finance among Small Business Owners in Ghana

Author

Listed:
  • Othniel Ekow Kwainoe

    (NiBS University, Accra, Ghana.)

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between financial literacy and access to finance among small business owners in Ghana. Financial literacy was measured through items on budgeting, cash-flow management, interest, financial statements, borrowing costs, insurance and investment risk. A simulated dataset of 242 small businesses was analysed using descriptive statistics, correlation, multiple regression and binary logistic regression. The results indicate moderate financial literacy, with stronger knowledge of budgeting and cash-flow management than insurance and borrowing-cost calculations. Financial literacy significantly predicted access to finance after controlling for business age, size, registration, owner education and financial record-keeping (β = .431, p < .001). Among loan applicants, a one-unit increase in financial literacy more than doubled the odds of approval (OR = 2.203, p < .001). Financial records and collateral also improved approval prospects, while high interest rates and complex documentation remained barriers. The study shows that financial education should be combined with record-keeping support and more accessible lending procedures. Given the cross-sectional design, limited national representativeness and reliance on self-reported financing outcomes, the findings should be interpreted cautiously, and future research should use longitudinal data and lender records while examining regional and sectoral differences.

Suggested Citation

  • Othniel Ekow Kwainoe, 2026. "Financial Literacy and Access to Finance among Small Business Owners in Ghana," Post-Print hal-05714440, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05714440
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05714440. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.