The Presidents / Chief Executive Officers
All Banks/DFIs

Dear Sirs / Madam,

 

Guidelines for Fisheries Financing

Fisheries is an important sub-sector of agriculture. Pakistan with a coastline of more than 1000 km and a total area of approximately 0.25 million sq km of marine and 0.08 million sq km of inland waters, has great potential for fisheries that can play a significant role in the national economy by contributing towards food security of the country, reducing pressure on demand for mutton, beef and poultry and earning of foreign exchange. Fisheries sector is providing direct employment to about 379,000 fishermen and 400,000 people are employed in ancillary industries. It has a domestic consumption potential of 1 million metric tonnes and export of US$1 billion annually. However, the flow of bank credit to this sector is negligible i.e. 0.4% of the total agricultural credit disbursement.

In order to facilitate the banks/DFIs to  increase the flow of credit to this sector, SBP has developed guidelines for fisheries financing in consultation with key stakeholders including fisheries departments, fishermen cooperative societies, chambers of agriculture, farmers associations, agriculture research institutions, banking sector and MINFAL.

The Guidelines cover all areas of the fisheries financing including purposes and objectives of the loan both for marine and inland fisheries, eligibility of borrowers, types of financing, fixation of loan limit, repayment terms, loan monitoring mechanism, etc. Banks may adopt the guidelines in the present form or with some adjustments to suit their organizational & operational needs and market characteristics, subject to compliance with SBP Prudential Regulations for agriculture financing.

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