ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Mohammad Ishaq Dar chaired a meeting to review implementation status on the Prime Minister’s interest free loan scheme.
Ms. Laila Khan, Chairperson PM Youth Programme, CEO, Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF), and senior officials of Ministry of Finance and BISP participated in the meeting.
The meeting was informed that under the Scheme an amount of Rs.3.5 billion had been provided to the PPAF which had disbursed Rs.2,250 million (Rs.50,000 average size loans) by end December 2015 to 110,016 beneficiaries. Out of these 65,851 were female and 44,165 were male applicants.
Interest free loans were being made available to men and women from households with a score of up to 40 on the Poverty Score Card (PSC) and with little or no access to banks or microcredit institutions. Under the scheme 287 Union Councils in 44 districts across the country had been covered. Bulk of the loans had gone to the livestock sector, followed by business and trading, services and agriculture.
The meeting was also informed that to ensure smooth and effective implementation of the Scheme, PPAF has developed a robust monitoring and evaluation system. Three units of PPAF are responsible to monitor the activities of PMIFL Scheme which include PMIFL Unit, Monitoring, Evaluation & Research (MER) Unit and Finance and Accounts Unit.
The Finance Minister appreciated efforts of the Chairperson PM Youth Programme and the PPAF and expressed satisfaction on the progress achieved thus far. He also gave instructions to seek regular feedback on the utilization of disbursed loans and said this was important to ascertain the efficacy of the scheme and its impact in terms of economic uplift of a large segment of the society.
