Anjum Nisar, President KCCI along with Siraj Kassam Teli, Chairman ruling Businessmen Group (BMG) said in a press release that while appreciating positive steps of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) with regard to 100 percent Export Refinance Scheme, the business community criticise and strongly protest upon recent further increase of 2 percent discount rate by SBP.
This increase would adversely affect the cost of doing business. The industry is already under immense pressure and is finding hard to stay afloat. Now the industry has to bear cost of increase in discount rate, which will further increase the cost of production. The steps taken by SBP so far to stop inflation had actually resulted in pushing it further up. There is a need to check the overall system that has been responsible for inflation.
This is common knowledge that government borrowing, which is almost double the same period last year bears the price responsibility. KCCI proposes that Government should take measures to slash down mark-up rate to reduce cost of doing business and increase competitive edge of our products in local as well as international markets. They also urged the SBP to remove the service charges, taken by the banks on remittances to discourage Hawala and promote banking channel.
They appreciated SBP for removing 35 percent margin on certain industrial raw material. And also for announcing no impact on KIBOR, due to recent rise of 25 percent and instructing Bank Presidents to absorb this raise by shrinking the spread, and not by enhancing interest rates of the borrowers, which is spread of 7 percent to be reduced by Banks as announced by SBP Governor. This is common knowledge that government borrowing, which is almost double the same period last year bears the price responsibility.-PR