LAHORE - Farmers and land owners in Punjab will get loan within three days after the Punjab Land Records Authority signs a service-level agreement with 24 commercial banks.
All arrangements have been made for provision of loan to farmers through 24 commercial banks within three days and inaugural ceremony of the agreement is expected on July 10.
“Data of 55 million land owners will be shared with the banks. The banks will be able to read the data, but they won’t be able to tamper with it,” says a senior official of the PLRA.
“The service-level agreement with commercial banks will make issuance of loan to farmers more transparent. There is no chance of tampering with the data as PLRA has a software, which can detect any changes in data,” the official said.
Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar has paid special attention to provision of loan to farmers in three days. He chaired a meeting on Tuesday on issuance of property documents to land owners through 24 commercial banks with dedicated counters.
PLRA Director General Shaukat Ali said 10 million pages of old record were scanned and land record of over 55 million landowners in Punjab was digitised and made accessible online.
“Practically, the time needed to complete a transaction has decreased from two months to 50 minutes. With the new agreement, banks will be able to shorten the process of 30 days to three days to provide loan to farmers,” he said.
There are 151 Arazi Record Centres (ARC) in all 143 tehsils and they are providing computerised services of fard and mutation across Punjab.
The data shared by the PLRA would enable the banks to check the status of a land owner with just one click. The banks, which will provide loan and property documents to land owners in Punjab, are Bank Alfalah, Allied Bank Limited, JS Bank, Habib Bank Limited, United Bank Limited, Faysal Bank, Khushhali MFB, MCB Bank Limited, Askari Bank Limited, Pak Oman MFBL, NRSP MFBL, Bank Al-Habib Limited, MCB Islamic Bank, u bank, Soneri Bank Limited, The Bank of Punjab, The Bank of Khyber, The First MFBL, Meezan Bank Limited, First Women Bank, APNA MFBL and Mobilink MFBL.