KARACHI: The Sindh Board of Revenue (BoR) is set to sign an agreement with commercial banks to provide an online service for verification of land ownership for sanctioning agricultural loans.

Sindh will be the first province in the country to provide the banks online access to its computerised farmland data to facilitate credit.

Sindh BoR Reforms Member Zulfiqar Shah said in a meeting that the facility would drastically cut time for sanctioning of loans to the farmers as it took up to three months for the banks to verify the land ownership record of the applicants.

The online system will eliminate the lengthy and cumbersome process of verification by the banks which had to undergo a detailed procedure of correspondence with the revenue officers of the BoR.

Mr Shah said the online verification would also help increase the size of agricultural lending. According to official data, the share of the province in total farm lending has gradually declined from 12 per cent in 2012 to 8.3pc last year.

The BoR has completed its project of computerising the ownership record of rural and urban immovable properties and set up service centres in several cities, including Karachi.

An ownership certificate of any piece of land in the province can be obtained from the centres after paying a service charge of Rs150.

The board held several meetings with the information technology staff of the banks and briefed them in detail on the online service for verification of land ownership.

The provincial BoR member said in reply to a question that a nominal fee would be charged from banks for using the online service.

He said the facility would boost the value of collateral required for sanctioning farm loans and also enhance trust in land transactions.

Published in Dawn, November 13th, 2016