The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s Businessmen Panel (BMP) has welcomed the Economic Coordination Committee’s (ECC) decision to approve the Risk Coverage Scheme for small farmers and underserved areas, urging the State Bank of Pakistan to notify the scheme without any further delay.
FPCCI former president and BMP Chairman Mian Anjum Nisar said the approval was an important step toward correcting a long-standing imbalance in agricultural credit distribution where the bulk of financing continues to be consumed by large landholders in Punjab and Sindh, leaving millions of small farmers in other provinces struggling for survival.
Anjum Nisar pointed out that small farmers make up more than 93 percent of the country’s agricultural borrowers, yet they receive only 32 percent of total agri-credit disbursements. In contrast, the large farmers, who represent a mere 7 percent of borrowers, corner 68 percent of the lending. He said this disparity not only worsens rural poverty but also deprives the national economy of the full potential of agriculture, which remains the backbone of Pakistan’s livelihood and food security.
Quoting figures shared during the ECC meeting, the FPCCI leader said that currently 97 percent of agriculture financing is concentrated in Punjab and Sindh, while only 3 percent trickles down to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan, Azad Jammu & Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. He stressed that this imbalance must be corrected, especially as farmers in these underserved areas are already facing multiple shocks, from climate change to poor infrastructure and market access. “If agriculture credit continues to bypass them, the inequality between provinces will only deepen, creating long-term socio-economic instability,” he warned.
The BMP Chairman said the ECC had rightly recognized that the proposed scheme should cover not just small and subsistence farmers in Punjab and Sindh but also all farmers in the underserved provinces, since their share of credit disbursements is already negligible. According to the Finance Division’s briefing, the scheme has the potential to bring 750,000 new borrowers into the fold within the next three years. Nisar described this as a positive development but cautioned that the success of the plan will depend on the seriousness with which SBP and commercial banks implement it.