After the financial crisis in 1997, the Thai government established and promoted financial services to rural areas to improve the quality of life of rural households and increase the productivity and technical efficiency of farmers. This paper seeks to investigate the impact of financial services on the technical efficiency of rice farmers. Stochastic frontier production functions are estimated using the survey data collected from 656 rice farmers in 2004. The average technical efficiencies of rice farmers were 79 per cent. Factors affecting the technical inefficiencies of rice farmers were land, amount of loans used for major rice production, experience, formal education and age. Hence, government policy that would improve the level of education of farmers and support rural financial services to farmers would lead to a significant increase in the level of technical efficiency of major rice production.