Disclosure about 'beneficiaries' disallowed in Senate: Rs 22.24 billion written off only last year

Pakistan Peoples' Party Parliamentarians on Wednesday spilled the beans by revealing names of those whose loans amounting to Rs 22.24 billion were written off only last year.
Speaking at a news conference at the Parliament House, after he was disallowed by the Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro, Senator Enver Baig said that all the 'beneficiaries' are the people who matter.
He said that Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Yousaf got waived millions of rupees loan from the Muslim Commercial Bank, United Bank and the National Bank of Pakistan.
Baig explained that the NBP wrote off Rs 4.70 billion loan, payable by Sehgal Group, Fateh Textiles, Crescent Group, Jam Yousaf and Rose Textiles. In the Rs 4.76 billion UBL waiver again Jam Yousaf, Crescent Group and Rehana Textile Mills, owned by Gohar Ayub, were among those on the top.
MCB wrote off loans amounting to Rs 1.03 billion and the 'beneficiaries' were Phalia Sugar Mills (owned by the Chaudhrys of Gujrat), Jam Yousaf, Munnoos and Co and Punjab Road Transport, while HBL waived Rs 6.60 billion of Phalia Sugar Mills, Adamjee and Crescent Group. ABL wrote off Rs 5.13 billion of Gandhara Group and Sehgal Group.
Enver Baig said that the figures were compiled from the banks' balance sheets. He castigated State Minister for Finance Omar Ayub for making a wrong statement on the floor of the Senate that Rehana Mills had nothing to pay to the Industrial Development Bank of Pakistan (IDBP). The issue of Rehana Woolen Mills also echoed in the Senate, which did not pay back Rs 44 million loans, it obtained from the IDBP in 1982-83.
Earlier, the opposition's demand of giving relief to the small loanees of House Building Finance Corporation was rejected in the Senate besides that the House was informed that from 1999 to 2003 Rs 23.5 billion loans, mostly obtained by the influential coterie, had been written off.
Despite repeated requests by the opposition senators, the government appeared in no mood to even consider the issue, as Enver Baig raised the issue on a Point of Order, saying HBFC had served notices to the loanees for auctioning their property.
The PPPP senator spoke on the issue by moving a calling attention notice and wanted the House to demand of the HBFC to write off loans ranging between Rs 50,000 to Rs 0.25 million. He pointed out that since most of the people served notices belong to quake-hit Abbottabad and Haripur, therefore, they deserved this relief.
"People living in small houses now own palatial residences thanks to the loan concessions given by the rulers, while the small loanees are humiliated. Today majority of the population is living in grinding poverty with no government control over spiralling prices of daily-use items," Baig said. The Chairman declined to give him more time to disclose names of 'some prominent personalities' who got their loans written off during President General Musharraf's rule.
"This is totally unfair and great injustice to the poor people at a time when the elite and the influential skip the payment as and when it pleases them," the senator contended. Omar Ayub rejected the Baig's allegation that his relative's loans were waived and maintained that the Peshawar High Court had ordered the mill's liquidation.
About the HBFC loans, the State Minister said that the corporation had given three packages to the loanees in recent years and the option of auction always prompted 80-85 percent people to pay back liabilities.
Last year, he said, as many as 28,000 loanees had benefited from the package, though 57 percent loans were still stuck up.
Prior to that Soomro suspended the Question Hour to resume the debate on the privatisation policy with particular reference to the Pakistan Steel Mills sell-off.
As the House resumed business, Opposition Leader Mian Raza Rabbani on a point of order strongly objected to the presence of an 'intelligence sleuth' in the Senate and taking away a copy of the orders of the day.
Rabbani told the Chair that he was 'alarmed' by the person, making exit from the lobbies after grabbing the copy of the agenda from the Senate secretariat staff present in the House. "Please don't take it lightly, a stranger is found in the House when proceedings were to resume," he remarked.
"I will check it. But let me say, this should not have happened," the chairman said in his ruling.