Agriculture E-Credit Initiative
Pakistan
The Agriculture Department of the State of Punjab has initiated an interest-free loan scheme for small farmers. The scheme provides loans to farmers possessing land less than 12.5 acres and has a flexible repayment option. The Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) has developed a centralised system for managing the database that contains some 350,000 registered farmers. All stakeholders can access the database of registered farmers and all processes involved in loan allocation have been automated. The loan scheme has significantly improved processing time reducing the number of required visits the PLRA and the banks by farmrers from 10 down to three. Todate over 110,000 farmers were given smart phones to access the loan using Easy Paisa mobile wallets and in addition benefit from 10 agriculture related applications at their fingertips. These applications include Onboarding/ Tutorial App; Weather Alerts; Crop Calendar; Video on Demand App; Expert Opinion App; Crop Yield Calculator; Marketplace; Supply Chain Tracking; Agriculture Subsidy.
Lead (category)
Private-public partnership
Name of initiative lead (and partners)
Department of Agriculture, Punjab
Categories of Digital initiative deliverables
Specific ICT technology product and/or service delivery
ICT products/solutions and services by category
Digital Finance
E-Government Services
Non ICT products and services (deliverables)
Access to credit and loans Access to government subsidies
Business and governance structure
Implemented by Department of Agriculture, Punjab in partnership with major agricultural banks and 4 telecomm operators
DI ICT-deliverables format
Mobile applications
Web-based platform
Primary stakeholders (beneficiaries, actors, enablers)
Farmers
Size, scale or scope of primary stakeholders
Digital Initiative development Stage
Fully operational - Growing and expanding stage
Measurable impacts on primary stakeholders and target beneficiaries
Initiative geographic scope (or coverage) (national, regional, sector specific, specific user co-horts etc)
Regional
All over Punjab province
On-line resource links (Web-page links, links to videos, links to reports, etc)
Link to Digital village
Link to Digital solution