City Bank partners with Milk Vita, Agroshift

City Bank PLC, Milk Vita and Agroshift have signed a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding to launch a Digital Dairy Financing Initiative aimed at expanding access to formal finance for dairy and cattle farmers across Bangladesh through a technology-enabled ecosystem.

The signing ceremony was held recently at City Bank Center in Gulshan, in the city.
Mashrur Arefin, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of City Bank PLC, and S M Ameer Hamza Shatil, Chairman of Milk Vita, were present at the ceremony.

Qazi Bouland Mussabbir, Chief Executive Officer of Agroshift; Md Mahbubur Rahman, Additional Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of City Bank PLC; Kamrul Mehedi, Deputy Managing Director and Head of Small, Microfinance and Agent Banking Business of City Bank PLC; 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 were also present, according press release.

The partnership seeks to address limited access to formal financing in Bangladesh’s dairy sector, despite the sector’s significant contribution to the national economy and rural livelihoods.

According to industry estimates cited in the statement, Bangladesh has around 1.2 million dairy farms, supporting nearly 9.4 million people directly and indirectly. The livestock and dairy subsector contributes around 2.73pc to national gross domestic product and 17.15pc to agricultural gross domestic product.
Bangladesh produced around 10.79 million tonnes of milk in 2024, ranking fifth in Asia and 19th globally by production volume, the statement said.

The domestic milk market is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 9pc through 2029, reaching an estimated market size of $8.43 billion.

Despite this growth potential, a significant demand-supply gap persists, while only around 9pc of total milk production currently flows through formal processing channels, according to the statement.

Under the initiative, Milk Vita will provide access to its network of more than 3,300 primary cooperative societies, 61 chilling centres and over 300,000 dairy farmers across 57 districts.

Agroshift will serve as the technology and ecosystem enablement partner, supporting farmer identification, digital onboarding, electronic know-your-customer facilitation, operational monitoring and utilisation tracking through a digitised platform.

Using this digital infrastructure, City Bank will facilitate financing solutions tailored to the needs of dairy and cattle farmers, enabling productive investment, stronger financial inclusion and greater participation in the formal banking system.

The collaboration combines cooperative reach, digital innovation and financial expertise. By creating a digital data infrastructure and farmer financing framework, the initiative aims to unlock sustainable growth opportunities across the dairy value chain.

City Bank said it had disbursed around Tk413 crore to dairy farming enterprises during fiscal year 2025-26 out of total agricultural loan disbursements of Tk1,100 crore, underscoring the sector’s strategic importance within the bank’s agricultural financing portfolio.

The partnership aims 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 for more than 300,000 farmers.

The initiative is expected to strengthen financial inclusion, improve productivity, promote access to formal banking and create a sustainable framework for rural economic development.

Representatives of the three organisations expressed confidence that the collaboration would serve as a model for digitally enabled agricultural financing, helping create new opportunities for dairy farmers while supporting Bangladesh’s broader goals of rural development, food security and inclusive economic growth.