The paper shows that following a bungled implementation of Weavers’ Credit Scheme—a public programme—the weaving industry had reverted to the old days of near-total dependence on non-institutional credit. Trade credit on yarn procurement had become the all-important source. Trade credit brings forth lucrative gains for the traders by way of interest rate mark-up. However, it permits a very fast working capital turnover, of 49 per year, and therefore a high level of capacity utilisation. High mark-up on the interest rate is due to high compounding that is scheduled into the repayments. Such surplus extraction imposes a strictly modest decline in weavers’ profits—of about 10%. The trader does not extract as much surplus as would be indicated by his share of the resources in circulation in the weavers’ business. This is due to the traders’ enlightened self-interest and the want of obvious exploitability on the part of the weavers: the poverty ratio on the study sample is over one-half. Against a background of high costs of yarn relative to the purchasing power of an average Bangladeshi consumer, the compulsion to keep cloth production in motion requires that at least moderate profits can accrue to the weaver, and that his yarn absorption, more than half of which is financed by trade credit on the study sample, is the single most significant determinant of factor productivity, while controlling for statistically significant direct effects of several other non-financial variables.