InfraZamin Pakistan has officially announced the launch of its Agri-Storage Portfolio Financing Facility, marking a flagship initiative derived from the design deliberations of the Social Impact Financing Committee. The high-level committee, chaired by the Federal Minister for Finance and Revenue Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb alongside a dedicated task force from the Ministry of Finance, designed this intervention to modernize national agricultural value chains and systematically mitigate persistent post-harvest crop losses. Once the structure is completely deployed, the framework is set to mobilize up to 7.1 billion rupees in private sector capital to fund agricultural storage upgrades, divided into 5.0 billion rupees in debt financing and 2.1 billion rupees in equity contributions distributed across farming communities.
To de-risk the massive commercial credit deployment, InfraZamin is providing a 2.5 billion rupee principal credit guarantee that covers 50 percent of the portfolio risk for participating financial institutions. The capital raised through this arrangement will be directed exclusively toward the comprehensive renovation, technological upgrade, and fresh construction of modern agricultural warehousing, grain silos, and cold storage facilities across the country. The program is initially being pioneered in close coordination with three prominent commercial institutions, including Pak Brunei Investment Company Limited, Faysal Bank, and the Bank of Punjab, which will offer the specialized credit facility to their respective corporate and small-to-medium enterprise agribusiness clients.
The overarching Social Impact Financing framework operates on an entirely outcome-linked model, meaning the program is legally structured to generate clear, measurable socio-economic shifts within the agricultural sector. Over the course of the next two years, the capital injection is expected to successfully construct or upgrade more than 300,000 metric tons of secure storage capacity specifically earmarked for wheat, various grains, fruits, and vegetables. This large-scale infrastructure development addresses a critical vulnerability in the local supply chain, allowing rural farmers to preserve their seasonal yields, avoid distress selling immediately after harvest, and access far more profitable market windows to stabilize their household incomes.
Beyond structural crop preservation, the initiative is anticipated to act as a significant driver of employment generation, creating a wide range of direct and indirect jobs throughout rural and semi-rural areas. These employment opportunities will span multiple segments of the broader supply chain, including professional warehouse management, complex logistics, physical transportation, cold-chain operations, and specialized agricultural processing. The initial construction and modernization phase will also provide a secondary economic stimulus to allied industrial sectors such as packaging manufacturing, structural construction, and formal financial services, ultimately creating localized livelihood opportunities that help decrease ongoing rural-to-urban migration pressures.
A highly critical technical aspect of the program is that all storage properties, warehouses, and silos developed under this financing facility will be fully eligible for the State Bank of Pakistan’s Electronic Warehouse Receipt financing mechanism. This integration allows the new infrastructure to directly complement the ZARKHEZ-E initiative, which is a state-backed program offering uncollateralized loans to smallholder farmers to enhance formal financial inclusion. By utilizing digital warehouse receipts as secure collateral, small-scale farmers can seamlessly unlock working capital from commercial banks without needing traditional land pledges, establishing a more resilient, highly integrated, and transparent financial ecosystem for the country’s agrarian economy.
Follow the PakBanker Whatsapp Channel for updates across Pakistan’s banking ecosystem.