The vouchers were allocated to District Agricultural Directors, who passed on the vouchers to extension officers for final distribution among farmers. The distribution of vouchers between districts was formally based on vague notions of “farmers’ need”. However, Banful (2010b) argues that the actual regional allocation of vouchers was more closely correlated with political factors than efficiency or equity considerations. Specifically, he shows that districts, which the incumbent party lost in the previous election in 2004, received more vouchers than districts it won. Further, the number of vouchers allocated to a district increases with the vote margin, with which the district was lost. Banful (2010b) interprets this result as attempts of “vote-buying” by the government. The weaker the government is in a district, the more it is favoured by the subsidy programme. At the sub-district level, there were no centrally stipulated criteria for who were eligible for receiving vouchers, so any guidance was mainly provided by the district directors. Banful (2010b) does not have any results on village-level allocation, but he argues that the most important politics is conducted at the district level anyway. As a result of the limited guidance, targeting varied greatly from district to district in terms of the number of vouchers each household could have (from 2 to 10 or more) and any characteristics of beneficiaries. Generally, it seems that most extension officers handed out vouchers to farmers on a first-come first-served basis.
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