Credit is a fundamental input for production. One of its major limitations is default payments. Quality of credit portfolios is directly linked to the quality of the projects that are used to generate them. This study assesses the quality of a non probabilistic sample of 213 livestock projects to which credit was granted by a financial institution in 3 consecutive years. Between 15-20 projects where obtained in each of the 12 regional branches covering the national territory. Fifteen different types of deficiencies where found. The most frequent deficiencies found were: the use of nominal interest rates, (100%), omission to include production costs (44%) including incomes from other activities (43%), and high calving rates (25%). The number of deficiencies per type of project was of 5.5 in the case of enterprises dealing with double purpose production (beef-milk); 6.3 for cow-calf production, and 6.5 for pasture fattening. Results were highly significant for the deficiencies by branches and significant for type of project. No statistical differences were found in relation to the year of preparation. There are statistical differences (P< 0.05) in deficiencies found between double purpose and cow-calf projects as well as between double purpose and pasture fattening. The exaggerated frequency of deficiencies, together with the fact that they were not detected by regular institutional supervision mechanisms, shows an obvious failure of these mechanisms but more over, it shows the possibility that these deficiencies are considered by the institution as “accepted problems” or “understood values”, since there are other priorities regarding credit policies such as use of nominal interests rates, short amortization periods, etc.