Prime Bank partners with USAID

Private commercial Prime Bank announced a partnership with the USAID-funded ‘Feed the Future Bangladesh Horticulture, Fruits, and Non-food Crops Activity’ for an intervention on instant and digital access to finance through the bank’s agent banking.

The initiative asserts Prime Bank’s ongoing drive for digital transformation in the financial sector, said a press release Wednesday.

According to the release, the horticulture activity supports the government’s food security objectives by strengthening the private sector’s capacity to increase productivity and production of quality horticulture, fruits, and non-food crops that meet domestic and international standards.

The objective of the partnership is to offer harvest-based loans for smallholder farmers & input retailers and introduce a digital application and an instant eligibility screening system to shorten loan applications and processing times.

Marcos Moreno, the chief of party of the horticulture activity, said, “We are excited to participate in this very innovative initiative. The activity is motivated to add value to innovative solutions driven by private sector actors like Prime Bank. It looks forward to working in partnership to unlock the gap for the thousands of unbanked and underserved rural women and men involved in horticultural crops.”

Prime Bank’s Managing Director and CEO Hassan O Rashid said, “We are excited to partner with USAID, a leading development partner in the world. Prime Bank has been working relentlessly to ensure greater financial inclusion through agent banking. A partnership like this is will be pivotal in achieving our mission in financial inclusion.”

The US government, through USAID, has provided more than $8 billion in development assistance to Bangladesh since its independence. Additionally, the US government has committed $96 million of assistance from multiple agencies to support COVID-19 response efforts. In 2020, USAID alone provided over $200 million to improve the lives of people in Bangladesh through programs that expand food security and economic opportunity, improve health and education, promote democratic institutions and practices, protect the environment, and increase resilience to climate change.