to the market ; introducing cutting edge farm technology and state of the art high yield seed varieties and numerous other innovations for the promotion of agri - based exports for the uplift of agriculture in the country. ladies and gentlemen, 4. majority of the world ’ s poor, an astounding number of over two billion people share one common profession : farming. but where agriculture harbors so many of the world ’ s poor ; it also offers the key to graduate economies out of the vicious cycle of poverty and food insecurity. beyond direct links to rural livelihood, agricultural sector has strong links to rest of the economy, and this is one of the most powerful ways in which it generates overall growth and reduces poverty. empirical evidence suggests that investment in agriculture is 2. 5 to 3. 0 times more effective in increasing the income of the poor than is non - agricultural bis central bankers ’ speeches investment. based on this premise, state bank of pakistan ( sbp ) is making relentless efforts to promote agriculture finance. my dear fellows and colleagues, 5. in our efforts to promote financial services to the agriculture - based community, we are faced with the challenge of removing numerous stumbling blocks to meet the financial needs of the agri - sector. 6. however, with the grace of allah almighty, the financial sector has not only stood strong against these challenges but has also registered remarkable growth. over the years, we have moved away from the ‘ mandatory - credit regime ’ where force - feeding of targets to highly regulated commercial banks was the norm ; towards a more open and ‘ market led ’ model where state bank has adapted itself into the role of a facilitator and developmental partner of financial institutions to accelerate the growth of agriculture finance in its natural eco - system. 7. today, more than ever before, banks are successfully exploiting business opportunities in agriculture financing. we started off with a hand - full of banks as reluctant financiers of agrisector but now we have 33 institutions, including islamic and microfinance banks that are providing financing efficiently to their agri - clientle. 8. agri credit has demonstrated a consistent rise with annualized average growth rate of 16. 2 percent for last three years. as a result agri credit increased to rs 391 billion in 2013 - 14 with agriculture credit advisory committee ( acac ) pushing the limits to even more aggressive credit disbursement target of rs 500 billion to be achieved during fy 2014 - 15. it is

business continuity planning and sophistication of the it resources, both in the state bank as well in the banking industry. and again, we need to cover a lot of ground here. the third item which i mentioned is asymmetry of supervision, which occurs when different market participants are regulated by separate supervisors. this makes it difficult for us to maintain comparable levels of vigilance and quality of objectives in policy formulation. the asymmetric regulatory regime can be within the country, for example between banks and securities firms, as well as at cross - border levels. the basel accord provides an excellent opportunity for developing common standards. yet it requires much closer cooperation, information - sharing and coordination of policies. in many developing countries only the banks are required to comply with basel ii, and not the other financial services providers. this carries the risk of promoting regulatory arbitrage. in the context of pakistan, it is important that the coordination of policies at the regulators ’ level i. e. secp and sbp, be pursued actively. this will be part of our deliberations with our co - regulator. let me now talk about the fourth item, i. e. imperfect markets and the challenges they pose. the functioning of the risk assessment systems of banks is clearly affected by the nature of innumerable types of distortions in the markets. in pakistan, like everywhere else, there are several problems that can create these distortions. these can pertain to the dominance of large players, or they could be related to the high asymmetry of information or the lack of market depth and so on and so forth. price manipulation by significant market players can also distort the true market value of the securities portfolio. to make any meaningful assessment of market risks and encourage market discipline, market imperfections have to be first of all recognized and then it is the job of the policy - makers to ensure that it puts in place a legal and regulatory framework which could minimize these distortions. clearly the banking sector has a role to play in this regard as a responsible citizen of the financial services industry itself. the regulator also has to do a lot of work in this area. it has to be capable of assessing the price risk and identifying situations in which market values of portfolios have been overor under - stated by the regulated institutions through price manipulations. in this context, market surveillance by the regulator needs to be enhanced, an area which is clearly a shortcoming currently. the fifth item relates