City Bank PLC has partnered with Milk Vita and agritech platform Agroshift to launch a digital dairy financing initiative aimed at expanding access to formal credit for dairy and cattle farmers across Bangladesh through a technology-enabled financing ecosystem.
The tripartite memorandum of understanding was signed at City Bank Centre in Gulshan, Dhaka, as the three organisations seek to address one of the dairy sector’s longstanding challenges: limited access to institutional financing despite its significant contribution to rural livelihoods and the national economy.
The signing ceremony was attended by Mashrur Arefin, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of City Bank PLC, and S M Ameer Hamza Shatil, Chairman of Milk Vita.
Also present were Qazi Bouland Mussabbir, Chief Executive Officer of Agroshift; Md Mahbubur Rahman, Additional Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of City Bank; Kamrul Mehedi, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Small, Microfinance and Agent Banking Business; Md Ashanur Rahman, Deputy Managing Director, Chief Economist and Country Business Manager of City Bank PLC; Zahidul Islam, Managing Director of Milk Vita and Joint Secretary of the Rural Development and Cooperatives Division; Diptha Saha, Chief Operating Officer of Agroshift; and other senior officials from the three organisations.
According to industry estimates cited in the initiative, Bangladesh has approximately 1.2 million dairy farms that support around 9.4 million people directly and indirectly. The livestock and dairy subsector contributes about 2.73 per cent to national GDP and 17.15 per cent of agricultural GDP.
Bangladesh produced around 10.79 million tonnes of milk in 2024, ranking fifth in Asia and nineteenth globally by production volume. The domestic milk market is projected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of more than 9 per cent through 2029, reaching an estimated value of $8.43 billion.
Despite the sector’s growth potential, a substantial supply-demand gap remains, while only about 9 per cent of total milk production currently passes through formal processing channels.
Under the agreement, Milk Vita will provide access to its cooperative network comprising more than 3,300 primary cooperative societies, 61 chilling centres and over 300,000 dairy farmers operating across 57 districts.
Agroshift will serve as the technology and ecosystem enablement partner, supporting farmer identification, digital onboarding, electronic know-your-customer verification, operational monitoring and utilisation tracking through a digital platform.
Using that infrastructure, City Bank will offer financing solutions tailored to dairy and cattle farmers, with the aim of supporting productive investment, increasing financial inclusion and expanding participation in the formal banking system.
The partnership seeks to combine cooperative outreach, digital technology and banking expertise to create a scalable financing framework for the dairy value chain.
City Bank said in a press release that it has already demonstrated a strong commitment to the livestock and dairy sector. During fiscal year 2025-26, the bank disbursed approximately Tk 413 crore to dairy farming enterprises out of total agricultural lending of Tk 1,100 crore.
Looking ahead, the partners plan to digitally onboard more than 100,000 farmers through Milk Vita’s cooperative network, establish a scalable dairy financing model across all 64 districts and build a digital data infrastructure covering more than 300,000 farmers.
Representatives of the three organisations expressed confidence that the initiative would serve as a model for digitally enabled agricultural financing while supporting financial inclusion, productivity growth, food security and rural economic development in Bangladesh.
