Member of Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry and prominent businessmen Ateeq ur Rehman has said that the long bank holidays caused colossal losses amounting millions of rupees leaving deleterious impacts on the economy. He said that problems of common man, businessmen and traditional exporters and importers were increased due to these losses.
He said that banking industry enjoy maximum holidays whereas banks remained closed for 5 days during Eid ul Fitr holidays. "The long bank closures brought long queues of customers outside different banks and majority of them was complaining about ATMs' bad link, non-functional or out-of-cash ATMs," he said.
KCCI member urged the authorities to avoid too many bank holidays on Eid or other occasions that bring worse impact on the economy while country remains disconnected with rest of the world for many days.
He said that recent announcement regarding bank closure for public dealing on July 3 in lieu of 1st July as bank holiday is not a very healthy decision from the national economic point of view. He said that if it was so necessary then Banks should have been opened on Saturdays for public dealing in order to rid people of unnecessary inconvenience.
Ateeq ur Rehman urged that the bank holidays on Saturday should be abolished in the interest of the country which is suffering enormous trade deficit. He urged that we should work hard as a nation, concentrate on more working days and contribute for the development of the country.