The Agriculture Minister Punjab, Malik Nauman Ahmad Langrial has said that the provincial government will disburse Rs 15 billion as interest-free loans to the farming community with the objective of increasing productivity and improving the living standard of growers. He was speaking at the launch of a report on "creating wealth in smallholder farmers through efficient credit system in Pakistan" here on Monday.
The report was launched by the Punjab government in collaboration with Australian Center for International Agriculture Research.
The event was attended by Dr Yusuf Zafar, Chairman PARC, Dr John Steen, Project Coordinator, The University of Queensland Australia, Galib Nishtar, President Khushali Bank Agriculture Microfinance Outreach along with other participants.
The minister said that small farmers represent a major portion of farming households in Punjab and have previously had very little access to formal affordable finance.
The credit available to these small farmers, mainly from informal sources, used to be of a very expensive escalating their cost of production.
The ultimate aim of the Agriculture department is to facilitate the farmer through the usage of mobile wallets. "We have a total of 55,000 active mobile wallet accounts, which eventually shows the success rate of this scheme. Current regime allocated budget of Rs 93 billion for Agriculture Sector as compare to Rs 81.30 billion in 2017-18," he mentioned.
He said that government wanted to uplift small farmers in accordance to the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
For interest-free loans, this government allocated Rs 15 billion during current financial year. Farming community was a neglected sector during past regime, resultantly, we lack far behind in as compared to rest of the world, the minister concluded.
Other participants of this event also stressed to devise innovative methods to ensure availability of credit to small farmers as it help farmers to buy input for improving their yield.
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