LAHORE - National Bank of Pakistan is among top ‘five’ banks of Pakistan. While it offers complete range of commercial banking services, on the key areas is lending to farmers. For the financial year 2011-12 the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has fixed an indicate lending target of Rs280 billion out of this NBP has been assigned the maximum share, a specialized institution created to cater the needs of farmers. NBP takes pride in having disbursed even more than the target assigned last year and aims at offering even better services to the farmers due to its greater outreach.
This becomes possible only because NBP’s 875 branches out of total 1271 domestic branches are involved in catering to the needs of farmers. The other feature distinguishing NBP is very competitive mark up rate, lower than the rate being charged by other financial institutions. The loans disbursed can be divided into two categories, production and development loans.
Under the first category loans are disbursed mainly for the procurement of seeds, levelling land, pesticides etc and fertilizers and the second category is for the purchase of agricultural tractors and implements and construction of modern storage, cattle farms, poultry farms etc facilities.
Under the leadership of President Qamar Hussain, NBP’s claim that it delivers loans at the door step of farmers is evident from disbursement of approximately Rs42.4 billion among nearly 252,000 farmers, against a target of Rs41 billion. NBP takes pride in being a key partner in government’s program of achieving food security and poverty alleviation.