Performance and Effectiveness of the Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) Programmes: Factor Analysis Technique

This paper aims to investigate the performance and effectiveness of Amanah Ikhtiar Malaysia (AIM) microfinance programme for poverty eradication in Malaysia. It is an attempt to provide a rigorous analysis of the role played by AIM with special reference to selected branches in Terengganu. This paper has employed the factor analysis technique and regression analysis to test research hypothesis. Multivariate technique of factor analysis was used to test the hypothesis that the social demographic characteristics of the respondents influence the AIM programme effectiveness through the socioeconomic variables while, multiple regression analysis was employed to investigate the determinants of effectiveness of the AIM programme performance. The findings has detected a significant relationship between the programme performance and socioeconomic and demographic characteristics of the targeted population.The findings of regression model showed that the most significant variable influencing the performance variable - loan utilization is the factor SS perceived adequacy of social services with a coefficient statically significant at (p = .00)> and explained about 36.3% of the variance in the dependent variable. The regression model also showed that the impact of the three demographic and economic factors were highly significant at leve1 0.05.