SBP urges banks to boost agri-financing

Banks disbursed Rs1.06tr in July-April FY22, down 1.4% from last year

KARACHI:

State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Deputy Governor Sima Kamil, while appreciating the efforts of all stakeholders, has urged banks to leverage the SBP’s recent initiatives and expedite efforts to boost agriculture financing and enhance outreach, especially in the underserved areas.

She made the remarks while chairing the quarterly follow-up meeting of the Agricultural Credit Advisory Committee (ACAC) on Wednesday.

The meeting reviewed progress on the key decisions taken by the ACAC in its last meeting held in December 2021 and reviewed the agricultural credit performance in July-April FY22.

The meeting took stock of the newly developed Agriculture Credit Scoring Model to gauge the performance of banks and reviewed the model’s results up to March 2022.

Highlighting the overall agricultural credit performance, Kamil appreciated the efforts of banks in disbursing Rs1.06 trillion during July-April FY22, which was 63% of the assigned target of Rs1.7 trillion for the year.

However, she noted with concern the relatively slow performance as the agricultural credit disbursement declined 1.4% as compared to Rs1.07 trillion disbursed during the same period of last year.

She attributed it to the slowdown in performance of some major commercial and specialised banks. The performance of mid-sized commercial banks, Islamic banks and microfinance banks and institutions improved during the year.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 16^th, 2022.

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