The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) will increase its lending during 2005 by at least 30 percent to 40 percent, especially in small and medium enterprise (SME) and agriculture sectors. NBP President Syed Ali Raza stated this, while addressing a press conference on the conclusion of two-day conference on "quality improvement" for senior executives here on Friday. He said other sectors included retail banking and corporate lending. He said that the NBP has disbursed Rs 225 billion in nine months of 2004 and the new targets would be against this lending.
He said for SME sector the NBP has selected six major areas, including dairy farming, power auto-looms, shopkeeper financing, auto vendors, cutlery and goldsmiths.
Master of ceremonies for the conference and head of retail banking Aamir Siddiqui said that the NBP has earmarked Rs 100 billion for disbursement to the SME sector in the next five years.
He said the NBP would target 3.5 million SMEs in the country to fund everybody on cash flow basis.
For agriculture sector, the NBP will extend production loans for inputs and development credit for value addition, including establishment of silos and storage facilities to save wastage of agriculture products and purchase of tractors and agricultural implements. He said the NBP would hire agriculture finance officers (AFOs) for this purpose.
Syed Ali Raza said a pilot project would be initiated for financing construction of silos and marketing of produce.
To a question, he said, margin financing was not a core business of the NBP, but added that the bank was ready to finance this activity.
Raza said these conferences provide a forum for interaction and resolving issues and networking.
Comments
Comments are closed.