Central Directorate of National Savings Rules amended

In response to media queries in the matter, it is stated that Government of Pakistan has amended Central Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) Rules, under Section 28 of the Public Debt Act 1944 (XVIII of 1944), governing Dead Accounts (Dormant plus Lapse to the Government) of National Savings Schemes (NSSs) extending the provision to all NSSs. This was done after an extensive exercise for over six-months, to safeguard the interest of CDNS investors to mitigate the risk of misuse of Dead Accounts/Certificates. The provision for Dead
Accounts/Certificates was always been there in Savings Account Rules, under The Government Savings Bank Act 1873, and has been followed regularly and acted upon periodically. Before implementing these provisions, CDNS ran an aggressive awareness campaign about these Dead Accounts/ Certificates in 24 leading regional and national dailies across Pakistan for more than 3 weeks, and ample time was given to the investors to reactivate these Accounts/ Certificates. During this period and by the time Dead Accounts/Certificates were made effective, around 20% of the Dead Accounts/Certificates were actually reactivated. These Dead Accounts/Certificates are revivable upon legitimate claim by the customer(s) at any time, and the process of revival has been working smoothly and perfectly since.
It may be recalled that this entire exercise of Dead Accounts/Certificates was done in line with the best banking practices and with similar guidelines of the State Bank of Pakistan. CDNS will continue to perform periodically as per Rules & Procedures. CDNS is already going through transformation and modernization to improve internal systems and processes for better customer service and robust control environment. To reiterate, the sole objective of this provision of Dead Accounts/Certificates is to protect the interest of investors of CDNS to take care of potential risk of fraud and forgeries in unattended accounts/certificates. CDNS is an Attached Department of Ministry of Finance with around 3,700 employees, over seven million customer accounts and 376 branches across Pakistan. The total investment portfolio is in excess to Rs 3.4 billion which is almost 30% of the total Pakistan's banking deposits. It's product ranges from three months to 10 years, from youth/students to senior citizens, from individuals to Pension Funds.-PR