SIALKOT: Governor State Bank of Pakistan, Dr Reza Baqir Saturday paid a visit to the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) on the invitation of its President, Qaisar Iqbal Baryal. The purpose of his visit was to seek firsthand knowledge from the businesses community, particularly the exporters, on the economic challenges faced by them in the face of global slowdown amid Covid-19 pandemic.
Deputy Governor, Sima Kamil, MD SBP BSC, Muhammed Ashraf Khan and other members of the senior management also accompanied the Governor during this visit.
Dr Baqir’s address on the occasion encompassed many topics. He said that the effects of Covid-19 had taken a heavy toll on economies all over the world and Pakistan was no exception. While elaborating the proactive steps taken by SBP since the onset of Covid-19 pandemic, as early as March 2020, the Governor elaborated that the overall objective of these measures was to minimise the negative fallout of the slowdown in the economy on businesses and employment in the country.
Shedding more light on the measures to keep the wheel of economy rolling, the Governor elaborated some other key steps taken by SBP in addition to reducing interest rates. The Governor shared the details of Deferment of Principle Amount and Restructuring of Loans Package to facilitate the borrowers in a bid to preserve the solvency of the borrowers and enable them to combat temporary economic disruptions.
Another major step by SBP to offset the sudden impact of economic shock was to prevent layoff of workers. SBP introduced its Rozgar Scheme that aimed at preventing layoff of workers by financing wages and salaries of all kinds of employees for private sector businesses. During the availability of this scheme, almost 3,000 businesses availed refinancing of over Rs237 billion benefiting over 1.6 million employees or workers.
The Governor contended that in the backdrop of Covid-19, SBP provided a number of relaxations under Export Finance Scheme (EFS) and Long Term Finance Facility (LTFF).
Moving on to the current economic measures taken by the Government and SBP, Dr Baqir elucidated the several schemes introduced to promote a quick recovery in the economy and employment generation for the masses.
The Governor explained that the Housing and Construction Sector is a priority sector for the Government for its widespread economic impact and potential for job creation. In line with its vision of providing affordable housing to the masses, Government of Pakistan will be providing a markup subsidy facility for the construction and purchase of new houses.
This facility will allow all individuals, who will be constructing or buying a new house for the first time, to avail bank’s financing at subsidised and affordable markup rates. Apart from creating incentives for banks to indulge in housing finance, they have also been assigned mandatory targets to banks to extend mortgage loans and financing for developers and builders to ensure the consistent flow of financing over time.
Responding to the Chamber’s recommendation to simplify the mechanism for DLTL, the Governor noted that the existing draw back schemes have already been simplified and the data of claims submitted through email is now electronically processed. Owing to this system based submission and processing, turnaround time has significantly reduced, said the Governor. Adding further, Governor said that SBP, in order to increase efficiency, is working on End-to-End Digitalization of foreign exchange related cases that also include trade related matters. SBP’s FX Regulatory Approval System has been live since March, 2020. The objective of this initiative is to provide a fully digitalised platform to the business community and individuals in approaching banks for their foreign exchange related requests, said the Governor.
After visit of SCCI, Governor Dr Baqir visited the factories of some key exporters to have firsthand knowledge about the potential for international quality exports from Pakistan.—PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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