It is a matter of great pride & satisfaction for all of us that today the State Bank of Pakistan is completing 60 years of its dedicated and selfless service to the nation. Central banks all over the world perform extremely important function of price stability and growth along with supervision & regulation of financial sector.
Central banking has assumed tremendous importance in modern day's complex financial world. Gone are days of directed credit policies. Today's world of finance is market based and highly interlinked with the global financial edifice. The complexity of financial markets has made the job of the regulators very challenging. At the same time, integration of the world economy has made domestic economies vulnerable to shocks in the rest of the world. All these factors put rather disproportionate responsibility on central banks.
I am pleased to note that the State Bank of Pakistan over the years has worked apace with the developments in the world economy. Not only our financial sector, particularly the banking sector has outperformed other sectors of the economy, but has emerged as a success story in the region. This sterling performance is a result of market oriented stance of the State Bank.
By the same token, the State Bank has been playing a crucial role in facilitating different sectors of the economy that have traditionally been unattractive to financial sector. Agriculture is a case in point where the credit outreach has multiplied over the past few years due to policies of the State Bank that have incentivized the private commercial banks to outperform specialised banks by a huge margin.
At the same time sector wise initiatives to improve access to development finance are changing lives of hundreds of thousands of the poor who have remained unbanked so far. One can enumerate a host of other such proactive market driven policies of the State Bank that have helped various sectors of the economy to grow and contribute to national development.
I would like to congratulate the management and all the staff members of the State Bank for their untiring devotion to their profession and for really turning around this great institution into a symbol of excellence in the financial world. I wish all the success to the State Bank and its Governor.
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