Pakistan needed to develop storage and silos type godowns for storing its small farmers' produce to enable them for timely marketing. This would fetch appropriate returns to their produce and alleviate the rural poverty thus minimising the role of middleman.
This was stated by the president of Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) in his meeting with the delegate of M/s Land O' Luke International Development on their visit to the bank's headquarters. The bank's chief Zaka Ashraf said that ZTBL was financing the entire value added chain of agriculture.
"We want to introduce drip, sprinkler irrigation, solar & windmill technology at small farm level" told the bank's chief. He further said that ours was an agriculture-based economy with 6.6 million farms, out of which 94 percent were small farms and its contribution was about 21 percent of GDP. He said that the current credit requirement for agriculture sector was Rs 553 billion while the available credit supply remained at Rs 250 billion so a wide gap existed which needed to be filled through new initiatives and collaborative efforts.
Earlier Bradley Buck of M/s Land O' Lake gave a presentation on developing global awareness initiatives focusing on dairy, agri business development and providing innovative & effective food and agriculture solutions.
The president ZTBL while giving the operational review of the bank said that bank held 45 percent share of total agri financing and the bank focused on rural development and expanded outreach at competitive market rates. We aspire that technology and finance went along and on the initiative of the President of Pakistan the bank has pushed forward its measures in technology building to generate the income of our rural poor. -PR
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