SIALKOT, Feb 14: National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Ameer Hussain has said that the government is making allout efforts for modernizing country's banking sector to meet the global challenges, in active collaboration with the private sector.

He was addressing participants in the inaugural ceremony of a branch of National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) at Khojey Chak on the border near Bajwat.

The speaker observed that the NBP had announced soft-term loans for farmers of all the 85 border villages of Bajwat to enable them to purchase fertilizers, seed, pesticides, tractors, tubewells and turbines.

Earlier, Sialkot NBP regional chief (business) Shahid Iqbal Dar said that the NBP had facilitated the people of Bajwat border villages with advanced banking facilities at the local level, and now they would not have to cross Chenab and go to Sialkot for the purpose.

He said that NBP's branch in Khojey Chak would be helpful in boosting agricultural production in Bajwat's backward areas.

Mr Dar said that Sialkot NBP had issued soft-term loans to farmers for purchasing 220 tractors and 131 tubewells/turbines and made possible cultivation of cucumber with ultra-modern techniques by financing the Narowal Greenhouse Project in 2003.

Earlier, the speaker also inaugurated a 300-line digital telephone exchange in Khojey Chak and a bus stop in village Looni.