The Central Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) Wednesday decreased the interest rate on the investment bonds due to current market situation.

The CDNS interest rates were decreased due to lower rates of Pakistan Investment Bonds (PIBs), senior official of CDNS told APP here. "The CDNS interest rates are linked with the policy of PIB set by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP)", said a senior official of CDNS. Directorate of National Savings (CDNS) has decided to change and lower the rates of different Certificates for November 1, 2019, he said.

Replying to a question, he said that the new rate for Defense Savings Certificate has been decreased from 13.01 percent to 10.68 while the rate of Special Saving Certificate from 12.90 to 11.13, Regular Income Certificate from 12.96 to 10.92percent. Likewise, the rates of Savings Accounts have been decreased from 10.25 to 8.20 percent while the rates of Bahbood Savings Certificates and Pensioners' Benefit Account were decreased from 14.76 to 12.48 percent.

He informed that the government had also decided to unchange the short-term (3months), medium-term (6 months) and long-term (12months) certificates. Short-term certificates rates have been retain at percent to 12.08 percent, medium-term at 12.18, while the rate of long-term certificate has been same at 12.28 percent.

He said that due to the rationalization of CDNS certificates' rates, the directorate had collected more savings than expected; therefore CDNS revised its target upward from to 324 to 400 billion for FY 2019-20.

Replying to a question, he said that investors of Rs 40,000 prize bonds have withdrawn Rs 207 billion by October 15, out of overall reserve of Rs 259 billion investments in CDNS in these prize bonds. After the decision taken by the Federal government, CDNS had discontinued the specific bond by June 24, 2019, he informed. The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) had directed that national Prize Bonds worth Rs 40, 000 denominations should not be sold after June 24, and would not be en-cashed or redeemed after March 31, 2020.

The bond holders had been given the option of either replacing them with Special Savings Certificates (SSC) or Defence Saving Certificates (DSC), premium prize bonds through State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) field offices or National Bank of Pakistan, United Bank, Habib Bank, Bank Alfalah Ltd, and Allied Bank or en-cash them at the face value.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2019