MPS on Saturday

The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has been shuffled and besides appointing an external member on a vacant seat, two board members of the State Bank have also been changed. According to SBP announcement, the meeting of MPC will be held on Saturday 9th April 2016 at Karachi for the deliberation on key economic issues to subsequently take a decision on the discount rate. In the previous policy announced in January, the committee kept the policy rate unchanged at 6 percent.
In November 2015, the parliament legislated amendments to the State Bank of Pakistan Act, 1956 for establishment of an independent MPC for key monetary policy decisions. Accordingly, an independent MPC, empowered to make monetary policy and its allied decisions, was constituted in January this year. The MPC comprises 9 members including three members of the SBP Board nominated by the Board itself, three external members who will be economist and appointed by the federal government upon the recommendation of the Board and three senior executives of the State Bank nominated by the Governor SBP. The Governor State Bank is the chairman of the committee.
The tenure of the SBP Board ended last month and a new board has been notified on March 24, in which some members have been replaced. Two retired members of SBP's board were also part of the MPC, therefore, the SBP has also inducted two new members in MPC replacing the retired members. As per new MPC, Mohammad Riaz and Ardeshir Khursheed Marker have been nominated as MPC member by the SBP Board. They have replaced Khawaja Iqbal Hassan, Muhammad Hidayatullah. In addition, Dr Aliya Hashmi Khan has also been appointed for the third and vacant position of external members. As per the SBP announcement on Monday, Ashraf Mahmood Wathra Governor SBP will be the chairman of the committee. Zafar Masud, Mohammad Riaz and Ardeshir Khursheed Marker will represent the SBP Board.
On three posts of senior executives, Saeed Ahmad Deputy Governor (FM, IB &SI), Riaz Riazuddin Deputy Governor (Policy) and Jameel Ahmad (Executive Director Banking Supervision Group) remain member of the committee. Similarly, Dr Asad Zaman, Dr Qazi Masood Ahmed and Dr Aliya Hashmi Khan are external member of the MPC. Before MPC, there was an advisory committee on monetary policy with the mandate to make recommendations to the SBP Central Board of Directors, which was entrusted with the powers to make monetary policy decisions.