The State Bank of Pakistan Banking Services Corporation (SBP-BSC) will organise farmers' meetings, in collaboration with banks, in different villages, to strengthen the agricultural sector, and would invite provincial agriculture department officials in all such programs.
This was decided in an Inter-Provincial Agricultural Workshop organised by SBP-BSC at Learning Resource Centre on Wednesday with a view to disseminate and share federal and provincial governments' initiatives, experiences, projects and their plans to strengthen the agricultural sector. The participants of the workshop also decided to explore possibility of establishing banks' booths at the 'Agri Service Centres' being established in major towns of Sindh.
While the revenue departments would take steps to ensure expeditious issuance of passbooks to the farming community, the land record automation project in Sindh and Punjab would be completed on priority. In addition, acknowledging the effectiveness of the forum, it was decided to organise workshops on half-yearly basis in all provincial headquarters.
This workshop was the first of its kind, organised by Development Finance Support Department of SBP-BSC, which was attended by senior officials of the Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) and Provincial Agricultural and Revenue Departments and heads of agri-finance departments of 15 commercial banks.
Kamran Shehzad, Managing Director, SBP-BSC, in his message of welcome highlighted the critical importance of the agricultural sector in the country's economy and emphasised the need for collaborative efforts by all stakeholders, including federal and provincial governments and banking industry, to develop a strong and robust agricultural sector.
He also dwelled upon initiatives being taken by the State Bank and SBP-BSC to ensure adequate flow of funds to the sector, which include developing a conducive policy and regulatory environment, awareness and information dissemination programs and establishment of regional agri-finance focus groups in all SBP-BSC offices across the country.
Minfal Additional Secretary appreciated SBP's initiative to organise the workshop which provided a forum to the banks and agriculture department officials to interact and to understand each other's plans, experiences, issues and concerns.
He also explained the multi-pronged strategy being pursued by Minfal to increase productivity of the sector, which includes a) strengthening of research and extension function, b) facilitating and promoting farm mechanisation, particularly among small and medium-sized farmers, c) promoting corporate farming, and d) promoting co-operative farming for which a mega project viz crop maximisation project is already operative in 1000 villages across the country.
The officials of Agricultural and Revenue Departments of each of the four provinces and AJK made detailed presentations on their respective department's plans and projects for facilitating the farming community for increasing their productivity.