KARACHI: Banks disbursed Rs1,059 billion during July-April (FY22), falling short of the assigned target of Rs1.7 trillion during April-July 2022-23 (10MFY22) by 37 per cent, the quarterly follow-up meeting of the Agricultural Credit Advisory Committee (ACAC) was informed on Wednesday.

Chairing the meeting, Deputy Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Sima Kamal appreciated the efforts of banks in disbursing Rs1,059bn during the period under review.

However, she noted with concern the relatively slow performance in terms of a 1.4pc decline in agriculture credit disbursement as compared to Rs1,074bn disbursed during the same period last year and attributed it to the slowdown in performance of some major commercial and specialised banks. The performance of mid-sized commercial banks, Islamic banks, and microfinance banks and institutions has improved over the year.

The ACAC meeting took stock of the newly developed agriculture credit scoring model to measure the performance of banks adopted by the SBP and reviewed the scoring model’s results up to March 2022.

HBL ranked first among large banks, with a score of 63.7 out of 100; Bank of Punjab ranked first among mid-sized banks, with a score of 65.2; Meezan Bank ranked first among Islamic banks, with a score of 42.4; and HBL Microfinance Bank ranked first among microfinance banks, with a score of 73.4.The participants were informed that the performance scorecards of all agriculture-lending banks will be published annually on SBP’s website.

Ms Kamal appreciated the growth in provincial disbursement of agriculture credit across all underserved areas. The disbursement in Balochistan increased by 73pc during July-April (FY22) as compared to July-April (FY21); 55pc in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB); 43pc in Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK); 23pc in Sindh; and 17pc in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). She highlighted that this improvement was the result of various interventions, including the Champion Bank model, which was adopted at the last ACAC meeting.

The ACAC nominated six banks as champions under the champion bank model in December 2021 inlcuing HBL for Balochistan, HBL Microfinance Bank for GB, National Bank of Pakistan for AJK, Bank of Khyber for KP, (v) UBL for Sindh and the Bank of Punjab for the Southern Punjab region.

Another key decision of the last ACAC meeting was to develop a strategy for the promotion of Electronic Warehouse Receipt Financing (EWRF). The participants were apprised that the EWRF Uptake Strategy has been developed and its various actions have been implemented, including the establishment of the EWRF Taskforce, the signing of Service Usage Agreements of banks with collateral management company, the allocation of EWRF targets to banks, and the capacity building of stakeholders, among others.

Published in Dawn,June 16th, 2022