geo/pakistan
Telenor Group has reached a strategic partnership agreement with Ant Financial Services Group (“Ant Financial”) in Pakistan, where Ant Financial will invest USD 184.5m for a 45% stake in Telenor Microfinance Bank (“TMB”), a subsidiary of Telenor Group, to further develop TMB’s mobile payment and digital financial services.
Gender Intelligence for Banks — Moving the Needle on Gender Equality This report is the result of a joint partnership between the International Finance Cooperation (IFC) and Habib Bank Limited (HBL) in Pakistan.
The agricultural credit outreach in Pakistan has increased to 3.27 million farmers at end June 2017 from 2.40 million farmers last year. The State Bank of Pakistan explored new financing products, value chain financing, warehouse receipts financing, digitalisation of credit, execution of credit guarantee scheme for small and marginalised farmers, and inclusion of microfinance institutions/rural support programs for catering the credit needs of marginalised farmers.
SME Finance Forum member, FINCA has announced a strategic partnership with Karandaaz Pakistan, a non-profit finance generating organization for small businesses and individual’s financial inclusion.
The report found that social enterprises are being used specifically to support women’s empowerment in Pakistan in three powerful ways, namely to:
• create economic empowerment for women through micro-entrepreneurship
• deliver training or employment opportunities for women
• provide affordable products and services for women
The study explores trends in SME financing over the past decade, and reasons that have contributed to high ratio of NPLs. The report includes several factors, such as SME Financing: A Comparative Overview, Breaking Down SME Financing and NPLs and Interventions Supporting SME Access to Finance.
Lending to small and medium enterprises of both conventional and Islamic banks has begun to rise due to higher credit demand.
Conventional banks’ lending to SMEs saw a sudden rise of 9.2pc or Rs27.40bn, during July-September. And, SMEs borrowing from Islamic banks, and from Islamic banking windows, also recorded a modest increase of 0.4pc or Rs2.73bn.
First microfinance bank in Pakistan whose mission is to strengthen the economic base of low-income population and micro-entrepreneurs by improving their accessibility to financial services.
The commercial banks are reluctant to shore up financing to the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), as financing showed negative growth of 0.37% in the second quarter of 2015 despite continuous reduction in policy rates by the central bank.
