ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday directed banks to expand lending to farmers, small businesses and prospective homeowners, calling for improved access to finance in three priority sectors to support economic growth.
Chairing a high-level meeting on housing finance, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and agricultural credit, the prime minister called on banks with an unsatisfactory lending record to improve their performance if they wished to benefit from government incentives.
He also directed the relevant ministries, their secretaries and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to consult stakeholders in the three sectors and submit recommendations by the end of this month on making existing financing schemes more effective.
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The meeting was briefed that loans worth Rs448 billion had been approved for 75,198 applicants under the Prime Minister’s Apna Ghar housing scheme. Of these, Rs76 billion had been disbursed to 14,000 beneficiaries.
A target has been set for banks to provide Rs700billion in financing for 125,000 housing units during the current year, the meeting was told.
To improve access to housing finance, the processing time for applications has been reduced to 15 working days, while the number of required documents has been cut from 25 to five.
The prime minister directed the authorities to further simplify the application process, particularly the requirement for unencumbered title deeds, which can be a hurdle for prospective borrowers.
He also called for the recommendations of a committee examining developer financing to be finalised and submitted at the earliest.
Agricultural lending currently stands at Rs1.352 trillion, benefiting around 3.455 million people, according to the briefing.
The government aims to raise the volume of agricultural credit to Rs1.5tr by June 2027 and increase the number of beneficiaries to 4.5 million.
In the SME sector, more than 352,000 businesses have received loans totalling Rs1.137trillion. The targets for June 2027 are to increase lending to Rs1.5trillion and expand the number of borrowing businesses to 575,000.
The meeting was also briefed on measures to strengthen banks’ institutional capacity to lend to the three sectors, including revised regulations for SMEs, risk-sharing arrangements, supply-chain financing and improved data-sharing mechanisms.
In a move aimed at addressing shortcomings in agricultural storage, the prime minister directed that inactive Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (Passco) warehouses and silos be operated under public-private partnerships.
He said private-sector participation should help expand storage capacity and enable farmers to preserve their produce safely.
Sharif also welcomed Allied Bank’s model of establishing commodity-storage warehouses and providing loans to farmers against their stored produce.
He called for the model to be expanded with greater private-sector participation.
The bank’s proposed investment plan for an SME park also received the prime minister’s backing.
The meeting was attended by federal ministers Rana Tanveer Hussain, Musadik Malik, Attaullah Tarar, Riaz Pirzada, Ahsan Iqbal, Shaza Fatima and other senior officials, as well as State Minister for Finance Bilal Kayani, the prime minister’s adviser on industries Haroon Akhtar and chief executive officers (CEOs) of JS Bank, Askari Bank, Allied Bank, Habib Metro Bank, Bank of Khyber and MCB Islamic Bank, along with senior officials of the relevant institutions.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026