The initiatives of the Chief Minister of Punjab regarding the introduction of the Kisan Card and Livestock Card are highly appreciable and reflect a positive intention to support the agriculture and livestock sectors during a period of rising economic pressure on farmers. The effort to introduce digital financial inclusion, interest-free credit facilities, and institutional support mechanisms demonstrates recognition of the importance of rural economies in Pakistan.

However, while such policy initiatives deserve acknowledgment at the conceptual level, it is equally important that ground realities, implementation challenges, administrative weaknesses, and behavioral patterns within the existing agricultural system are carefully evaluated before and during policy formulation. Unfortunately, in Pakistan, many well-intentioned schemes often produce outcomes different from those originally envisioned. The gap between policy conception and field implementation frequently limits the actual effectiveness of such initiatives. Therefore, alongside appreciating these reforms, there must be a serious and realistic assessment of whether these programs are genuinely achieving structural agricultural improvement or merely providing temporary administrative and political relief without addressing deeper sectoral challenges.

The Government of Punjab has introduced two parallel but strategically linked agricultural financing instruments: the Kisan Card for crop farmers and the Livestock Card for animal husbandry farmers. Both initiatives are designed as digital, interest-free credit systems aimed at improving agricultural productivity, reducing dependence on informal credit markets, and enhancing rural financial inclusion. While the intent appears reformative, practical outcomes, misuse patterns, and structural limitations require a more critical assessment.

The Kisan Card primarily targets crop farmers by providing interest-free seasonal credit for agricultural inputs. The general loan facility is approximately Rs. 30,000 per acre, with a seasonal ceiling that in many cases ranges around Rs. 150,000, though in later phases reports indicate expansion up to higher limits in certain categories.
The facility is typically available to farmers owning 1 to 25 acres of land, subject to verification through land records, CNIC authentication, and biometric confirmation. The card is mainly used for purchasing fertilizers, certified seeds, pesticides, and other crop inputs from registered dealers. A limited portion may be used for operational cash needs such as labour, irrigation, and diesel.

In contrast, the Livestock Card is designed for dairy and meat producers. It provides interest-free financing reportedly in the range of Rs. 135,000 to Rs. 540,000, usually for a short cycle of about four months plus a grace period. Its primary purpose is to support animal feed, silage, mineral mixtures, and calf fattening inputs. Eligibility is linked with livestock ownership (commonly 5–10 animals in many phases), CNIC verification, and digital registration systems.

Unlike the Kisan Card, this scheme is more focused on animal production cycles rather than land ownership alone, making it more inclusive for livestock-based rural households.

From a policy perspective, both schemes have several advantages. They provide interest-free formal credit, reducing dependence on informal lenders who often charge exploitative rates. The digital structure improves transparency through biometric verification and banking integration. The controlled input system ensures that subsidies are directed toward productive agricultural use rather than unrestricted consumption. In the livestock sector, the card also helps farmers manage feed costs, which are a major component of dairy profitability.

However, despite these strengths, serious implementation and governance concerns are emerging. In the Kisan Card system, reports indicate that some beneficiaries convert controlled input purchases into informal cash transactions through registered dealers, undermining the very purpose of input-based financing. Instead of purchasing fertilizer or seed, fictitious billing and commission-based arrangements allow partial cash extraction. Similar risks, although to a lesser extent, are also emerging in livestock financing channels where feed-related purchases can be manipulated through informal agreements.

Another critical issue is institutional pressure on field-level staff, particularly in implementing departments, including livestock and agriculture extension services. In some cases, administrative personnel reportedly face operational pressure and financial complications linked with loan cycles and recovery mechanisms. Such conditions weaken institutional neutrality and can compromise the integrity of field implementation.

The recovery mechanism in both schemes is structured on seasonal repayment. In the Kisan Card, repayment is expected after harvest within the crop cycle, while in the Livestock Card it is aligned with the animal fattening or production cycle (around four months).
Non-repayment leads to ineligibility for future cycles and possible classification as defaulters within the banking system.
However, in practice, recovery discipline remains inconsistent due to political pressures, weak enforcement, and administrative discretion.

A more fundamental concern is the structural imbalance between crop and livestock financing, which reflects a deeper reality in Pakistan’s agricultural economy. Over the years, the relative contribution of the crop sector to agricultural GDP has been declining, while the livestock sector has steadily increased its share, now contributing around 64 percent of agricultural GDP, whereas the crop sector contributes roughly around 38 percent in comparative terms. This shift clearly indicates that livestock has become the real backbone of rural income generation, often expanding even without proportionate institutional support, and both sectors remain vital for national economic stability.

A clearer understanding of the agricultural economy can be drawn from production figures of both the livestock and crop sectors. The livestock sector in Pakistan contributes approximately 72 million tons of milk annually, making it one of the largest milk-producing systems in the world. In addition, it produces around 5 to 6 million tons of meat (including beef and mutton), more than 20 to 22 billion eggs annually, and a substantial volume of poultry meat through broiler production, which exceeds 1.5 million tons per year along with a continuously expanding population of day-old chicks and commercial poultry stock. On the other hand, the crop sector produces around 30 to 31 million tons of wheat, approximately 9 to 10 million tons of rice, 80 to 90 million tons of sugarcane, nearly 10 to 11 million tons of maize, and about 8 to 10 million bales of cotton in normal production years. These figures clearly indicate that while crops remain essential for food security and industrial raw material, livestock provides a more diversified, continuous, and high-frequency production system that directly supports rural income stability.

A fundamental distinction between the crop and livestock sectors lies in their liquidity and resilience functions within rural livelihoods. The livestock sector effectively operates as a form of “ATM” for both crop and livestock farmers, as it provides continuous and readily monetizable outputs such as milk, eggs, poultry, and small ruminants. In periods of financial stress, crop failure, or household emergencies, farmers can immediately convert livestock products into cash to meet urgent needs, and in more severe hardships they can also sell animals as a direct and flexible source of capital. This intrinsic liquidity function makes livestock not only a production sector but also a built-in financial safety net within the rural economy, providing a unique stabilizing role that is not available in the crop sector, where returns are seasonal and delayed.

Despite this significant contribution, a serious fiscal imbalance persists in national and provincial development planning. Instead of relying predominantly on short-term interventions such as Kisan Cards and Livestock Cards, it is imperative that the Government of Punjab adopts a structural budgetary reform approach where financial allocations to each sector are aligned with their actual contribution to agricultural GDP. The livestock sector contributes around 60–65 percent of agricultural GDP, yet its share in development funding, research investment, and institutional strengthening remains disproportionately low—often estimated at less than 1 percent in effective research and development allocation when compared to its economic output. This disparity restricts progress in critical areas such as genetic improvement, disease control systems, artificial insemination networks, cold chain development, feed efficiency research, and value chain modernization.

A rational agricultural policy must therefore bridge this gap by ensuring equitable and proportionate budget distribution so that both livestock and crop sectors can advance through sustained research, innovation, and productivity enhancement rather than relying solely on credit-based incentive schemes.

Both schemes are also increasingly being viewed through a political economy lens. Incentive-based financial programs, when introduced in politically sensitive periods, can strengthen rural vote banks and create short-term political goodwill. However, such schemes may not necessarily translate into long-term agricultural transformation unless embedded in deeper structural reforms. The risk is that agriculture becomes a field of subsidy-driven political management rather than productivity-driven economic planning.
At the same time, fiscal sustainability is a growing concern. Large-scale interest-free credit programs require strong recovery discipline and strict monitoring. Any deviation, misuse, or political relaxation of repayment rules can gradually convert revolving credit into a permanent fiscal burden.

A more profound national concern is the widening gap between educational narrative and ground reality. Since independence, Pakistan has consistently been described as an agricultural country in educational curricula. Students are taught that agriculture is the backbone of the economy and the primary source of livelihood. However, the current ground reality raises a fundamental question: where does Pakistan truly stand in agricultural performance today?

Despite decades of this narrative, agricultural inputs, productivity systems, extension services, and value chains have not developed in accordance with the concept taught in our education system. As a result, agriculture exists strongly in textbooks, but its practical manifestation remains fragmented and structurally weak.

In conclusion, the Kisan Card and Livestock Card represent an important step toward digital agricultural financing in Punjab, but they remain input-focused rather than transformation-driven.

Their success depends on strict governance, transparent monitoring, elimination of informal cash leakage, and integration with long-term agricultural reforms.
It must be clearly understood that subsidies and incentive-based schemes have historically not produced sustainable success in Pakistan unless backed by firm, consistent, and farmer-friendly structural policies. The real challenge is not merely distribution of financial assistance, but creation of a system that genuinely improves productivity in both livestock and crop sectors.

The future of agriculture lies in enhancing production efficiency, genetic improvement, feed and input optimization, veterinary and extension services, water management, mechanization, and market integration. Without these foundational reforms, such cards will remain administrative instruments rather than engines of transformation.
Just issuing cards, credit lines, or temporary incentives will not change ground realities.

Sustainable agricultural development will only emerge when policy shifts decisively from short-term financial relief to long-term production enhancement and structural reform.
Pakistan’s agricultural future demands a coherent, integrated, and productivity-driven strategy in which both livestock and crop sectors are strengthened according to their real economic contribution and growth potential.

Dr Alamdar Hussain Malik
Advisor, Veterinary Sciences, University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Swat.
Former, Financial Adviser, Finance Division, Government of Pakistan