ISLAMABAD, Sept 19: The Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) recovered Rs46 billion showing a recovery percentage of 68.2 and small and medium loan recovery stood at Rs3 billion this year against 2.7 billion last year.

This was stated by head of the recovery ZTBL Mr Tasneem during zonal chiefs conference held here on Friday.

The ZTBL president Muhammad Zaka Ashraf speaking on the occasion said that in the light of the president’s vision for agriculture development and to alleviate rural poverty the bank must now focus on increased and diversified lending for development purposes.

He said the ZTBL was launching crop insurance scheme on the directives of the government at a nominal premium of 1.5 per cent.

He said that the bank had avenues for increased financing for tractors, tube wells, irrigation facilities, silos type godowns for timely storage of farmers produce to help them get good return.

Earlier the bank’s operational head Nadeem Chohan said that the bank disbursed Rs48.8 billion up to Aug 2008 compared to Rs37 billion showing a growth of 32 per cent.

On deposit side the bank launched different schemes and fetched Rs4 billion. The tractor financing also increased substantially from 6,000 to 11,000 tractors, while financing for tube wells increased from 700 to 1,400.