Agriculture credit registered phenomenal growth in last five years

The agriculture credit has registered phenomenal growth in the last five years, ie 80.49 percent as recently it touched Rs 248.12 billion from Rs 137.47 billion in 2005. According to documents made available to the Business Recorder, in 2005 all the Pakistani banks, including Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) disbursed over Rs 137 billion agriculture loans, but at present the total disbursements reached Rs 248 billion.
The share of Punjab during this time period has increased from 83.2 percent to 86.1 percent, whereas, the share of Sindh remained un change at 10.8 percent, share of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) decreased from 5.3 percent to 2.6 percent and share of Balochistan decreased from 0.4 percent to 0.2 percent.
The share of AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan also remained unchanged during the period under review at 0.3 percent. The documents revealed that agriculture credit was not equally distributed among the provinces, which increased disparity among them. According to documents, all the banks disbursed Rs 248.12 billion (Rs 225.02 billion production loans and Rs 23.10 billion development loans) during July-June, 2009-10 as compared to Rs 233.01 billion (Rs 209.31 billion production loans and Rs 23.70 billion development loans) during the same period last year.
The trend shows an increase of 6.48 percent, in monetary terms Rs 15.11 billion (in absolute terms) over the disbursement made by the banks during the same period last year. Overall, the performance of five major commercial banks, ie United Bank Limited, Allied Bank Limited, Habib Bank Limited, MCB Bank Limited, National Bank Limited and the specialised banks ie ZTBL and PPCBL remained satisfactory during July-June 2009-10 in the sense that these banks improved the disbursement of agriculture-credit.
Total Agri loan disbursement by Five Major Commercial Banks during July-June 2009-10 was Rs 119.61 billion (Rs 115.93 billion production loan and Rs 3.68 billion development loan) as compared to Rs 110.67 billion disbursed (Rs 102.78 billion production loan and Rs 7.90 billion development loan) during the same period of the last year, which shows an increase of 8.08 percent.
Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) distributed Rs 79.01 billion (production loan Rs 61.55 billion and development loan Rs 17.46 billion) against Rs 75.14 billion disbursed (production loan Rs 62.29 billion and development loan Rs 12.85 billion) during July-June 2008-09 showing an increase of 5.16 percent over the disbursement during the same period last year.
Punjab Provincial Co-operative Bank Ltd (PPCBL) disbursed Rs 5.72 billion (production loan Rs 5.39 billion and development Rs 0.33 billion) during July- June 2009-10 as compared to Rs 5.58 billion (production loan Rs 5.24 billion and development loan Rs 0.34 billion) during July-June 2008-09 showing an increase of 2.55 percent over the disbursement during the same period of last year.
Fourteen Domestic Private Banks (DPBs) disbursed Rs 43.78 billion during July-June 2009-10 (Rs 42.14 billion production loans and Rs 1.64 billion development loans) as compared to Rs 41.63 billion (Rs 39.01 billion production loan and Rs 2.62 billion development loan) disbursed during the same period of 2008-09. It shows an increase of 5.17 percent.