Pakistan’s Apna Ghar housing scheme has approved 75,198 loans worth Rs. 448 billion, but only Rs. 76 billion has been disbursed to 14,000 applicants, highlighting the gap between loan approvals and actual financing.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has directed banks and government agencies to simplify housing loan procedures and expand access to financing.
Chairing a high-level meeting in Islamabad, Sharif called for consultations with stakeholders from the housing, small and medium-sized enterprise (SME), and agriculture sectors to improve existing lending schemes.
He directed the relevant ministries, government secretaries and the State Bank of Pakistan to complete consultations by the end of October and submit recommendations.
The government has set a target of providing Rs. 700 billion in housing loans for 125,000 residential units this year. Officials said the processing time for housing finance applications had been reduced to 15 working days, while the number of required documents had been cut from 25 to five.
Sharif directed officials to make it easier for applicants to provide the required information and obtain unencumbered property title deeds. He also called for the early finalization of recommendations by a committee working on developer financing.
The prime minister urged banks with unsatisfactory lending performance to improve their results, while encouraging those making greater contributions to the priority sectors.
Agricultural lending currently stands at Rs. 1.352 trillion, benefiting 3.455 million people. The government aims to increase agricultural credit to Rs. 1.5 trillion and the number of beneficiaries to 4.5 million by June 2027.
In the SME sector, more than 352,000 businesses have received loans totaling Rs. 1.137 trillion.
The government aims to increase SME lending to Rs. 1.5 trillion and expand the number of borrowing businesses to 575,000 by June 2027.
Sharif also directed officials to bring inactive Pakistan Agricultural Storage and Services Corporation (PASSCO) warehouses and silos under public-private partnerships to expand storage capacity and improve the safe storage of farmers’ produce.
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