The State Bank has taken concrete measure for the promotion and development of key sectors of the economy specially underprivileged and underserved sectors which have received lesser attention from the formal financing institutions. The SME, Micro Finance, Housing and Agriculture sectors have not been able to get an easy and smooth access to finance from formal financing institutions. The measures taken by the State Bank has yielded fruitful results in terms of improved levels of formal financing to the above sectors, accompanied by changes in banks’ strategic focus towards these sectors. SBP has also been encouraging banks to develop capacity in these development finance areas to tape the potential business opportunities offered by these sectors to the banking industry. Over the past few years more funds have been channelized into the development finance area to boost the growth and performance of neglected sectors of the economy. Currently, due to certain factors including rising inflation and interest rates, economic instability, the effects of global financial and economic downturn, the growth of the formal financing to these four sectors declined slightly excluding the agriculture sector where the absolute amount increased by Rs. four billion. The following table shows the trends of last two quarters and their share in total bank advances.