Daily Times

As a way to educate farmers across Pakistan, especially those living in rural regions, the State Bank of Pakistan has launched a series of videos in national and regional languages regarding agricultural finance products and procedures. SBP and all agricultural lending institutions will distribute these movies via social media and digital platforms.

To gain access to rural markets, banks must overcome farmers’ lack of understanding of agricultural financing products and services. As a result, SBP’s varied efforts to promote and grow agriculture financing in the country place a heavy emphasis on capacity building and raising awareness of the issue. The SBP has organized a number of awareness and capacity-building programmes for farmers, but many farmers still lack the knowledge and skills to take advantage of formal financial services to their fullest potential.

In order to address this lack of awareness and to broaden the scope of SBP’s campaigns, the potential of digital media is being explored. Rapid penetration of the internet and increased usage of smartphones across the country have presented an opportunity to harness digital platforms for disseminating information instead of relying on conventional awareness sessions, which have limited outreach. The use of digital medium is not only helpful in spreading the message to a wider audience in a timely and cost-effective way, but also enables such messages to have a higher rate of comprehension and retention.

The first video in this series covers the overall agriculture financing landscape of the country, SBP’s initiatives, and GoP’s schemes, all from a farmer’s perspective. Keeping in view the need for enhancing accessibility of credit in the diverse underserved areas, this video has also been translated into three regional languages apart from Urdu, i.e., Sindhi, Balochi, and Pashto. The next two videos in the series focus on the crop and non-crop sectors, including information regarding agriculture loan products, and diving deeper into the procedures and documentation required for both segments.

It is expected that these videos will help the farming community to overcome their reluctance in availing of credit from banks. Moreover, to augment SBP’s initiative and achieve greater reach, agriculture lending banks will also share these videos on their respective social and digital media channels which will encourage banks to develop similar informative videos on product and financing opportunities for agro-based businesses as well.