Agriculture E-Credit Initiative

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)

Main DS webpage

Other useful link

Link to Digital village

Link to Digital solution