Money and banking drive economic activity by facilitating transactions, savings, and investments. Banks manage financial resources, offer credit, and regulate money supply, ensuring stability and growth in Pakistan’s financial sector.
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday issued following Karachi Interbank Offered Rates (KIBOR) as on June 21, 2021.
| Tenor | BID | OFFER |
| 1 – Week | 6.92 | 7.42 |
| 2 – Week | 6.96 | 7.46 |
| 1 – Month | 7.01 | 7.51 |
| 3 – Month | 7.20 | 7.45 |
| 6 – Month | 7.44 | 7.69 |
| 9 – Month | 7.52 | 8.02 |
| 1 – Year | 7.58 | 8.08 |
In Karachi, the Pakistani Rupee witnessed a depreciation of 62 paisas against the US Dollar on Monday, primarily attributed to heightened demand for imports and corporate payments.
(more…)KARACHI: National Institute of Banking and Finance (NIBAF) – a subsiday of State Bank of Pakistan – and JazzCash, Pakistan’s leading FinTech Company, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for increasing financial literacy amongst youth of Pakistan, the SBP said on Saturday.
NIBAF and JazzCash aim to jointly promote financial literacy through the engaging and interactive game called “PomPak – Learn to Earn” developed under SBP’s project, National Financial Literacy Program for Youth (NFLP-Y).
PomPak, utilizes a story-based narrative by following the journey of two families setting up a small entrepreneurial venture. This helps to keep the players engaged while effectively inculcating ethical behavior and financial skills such as budgeting, saving, and banking. PomPak is available in both English and Urdu for three age groups: children (9-12); adolescents (13-17); and youth (18-29).
Anyone who completes the course is awarded a certificate of financial literacy jointly from NIBAF and NFLP-Y. It can be played on a desktop computer or can be downloaded from Google Play and the App Store for other devices.
JazzCash, under its partnership, is going to provide SBP access to more than 26 million Pakistanis by promoting the PomPak application on its platform. This will help the application reach a wider audience, thus increasing its usage and eventually promoting financial literacy of the nation resulting in a highly positive socio-economic impact.
Riaz Nazarali Chunara, Managing Director, NIBAF stressed on the role of increased financial literacy for promoting financial inclusion. He said that being Pakistan’s first e-learning financial literacy game, PomPak has revolutionized the way financial education is delivered. He went on to add that NIBAF is really proud of what PomPak has achieved since its launch and this partnership with JazzCash will contribute majorly towards our commitment to provide free of cost financial education to all.
While emphasizing on the significance of the MOU, Erwan Gelebart, Chief Executive Officer JazzCash, said that there is ample scope for financial enablement and education through JazzCash.
Creating a strong business and building a better Pakistan in parallel are key contributors of long-term success for JazzCash. This agreement will contribute in achieving the aforesaid objectives as we look forward to upskill the youngsters of Pakistan, he said.
Under the guidance of SBP, NIBAF is implementing National Financial Literacy Program for Youth to impart essential financial education to Pakistani youth and school going children. In the last three years, the project has successfully reached more than 45 districts of Pakistan making over 750 thousands financial literate in this category.
KARACHI – The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has released the Karachi Interbank Offered Rates (KIBOR) as of Friday, June 18, 2021.
(more…)The Pakistani Rupee faced a depreciation of 15 paisas against the US Dollar on Friday, closing at Rs156.89 in the interbank foreign exchange market.
(more…)KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Thursday directed the banks to use a newly developed model for income estimation for extension of low cost housing finance.
The SBP said in order to facilitate low cost housing finance applicants with informal income, the central bank asked banks to develop and deploy income estimation model for extension of low cost housing finance to such applicants.
This measure is expected to ease difficulties being faced by general public in availing housing finance under Government’s Markup Subsidy Scheme (G-MSS), commonly known as Mera Pakistan Mera Ghar.
The SBP said the Pakistan Banks’ Association (PBA), through a consultative process, has developed and circulated among banks a baseline income estimation model. The purpose of this model is to assess income and repayment capacity on the basis of routine expenditures like house rents, utility bills and educational expenses etc. of a potential borrower who earns from informal sources.
The SBP asked the banks to use PBA’s baseline model, customize the same, or develop their own income estimation model.
Banks are required to confirm within 4 weeks that they have made their informal income proxy models operational, the SBP said. The availability of these models is expected to greatly enhance prospects of informal income applicants to secure housing finance from the banks, it added.
With this move, it is expected that financially excluded segment will be able to avail financing under G-MSS. On the other hand, this tool will enable banks to expand their outreach and cater to the financing needs of people having informal sources of income.
It is worth mentioning here that the SBP, with the support of banking industry, is working to reduce the hurdles being faced by the general public to availing housing finance under G-MSS.
A number of steps have already been taken to make this facility available to general public, especially low cost housing finance applicants.
These steps include relaxation of debt burden ratio, extension of housing finance against personal guarantee, development of online complaint resolution portal and establishment of banks’ joint call center to address queries.
Further, standardization and simplification of i) loan application form ii) facility offer letter and iii) documentary requirements for approval and disbursement are also proving beneficial for the applicants under G-MSS. As of June 15, 2021, banks have received applications of around Rs. 90 billion against which an amount of around Rs. 30 billion has already been approved whereas banks are processing rest of the applications.
KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) issued Karachi Interbank Offered Rates (KIBOR) as on Thursday, June 17, 2021.
Following are the KIBOR rates as on June 17, 2021.
| Tenor | BID | OFFER |
| 1 – Week | 6.92 | 7.42 |
| 2 – Week | 6.96 | 7.46 |
| 1 – Month | 7.01 | 7.51 |
| 3 – Month | 7.22 | 7.47 |
| 6 – Month | 7.44 | 7.69 |
| 9 – Month | 7.50 | 8.00 |
| 1 – Year | 7.58 | 8.08 |
KARACHI: The Pak Rupee on Thursday gained 22 paisas against the dollar owing to substantial inflows witnessed during the day.
The rupee ended Rs156.74 to the dollar from previous day’s closing of Rs156.96 in the interbank foreign exchange market.
Currency experts said that the market witnessed inflows of workers’ remittances and export receipts, which helped the rupee to make gain.
They said that the dollar demand for import and corporate payments was remained high during the day.
KARACHI: Pakistan Mortgage Refinance Company (PMRC) announced the closing of another Sukuk with HBL Islamic Banking.
A statement issued on Wednesday said that the sukuk will serve to make Shariah Compliant Housing Finance more accessible to the public.
On the occasion Mudassir CEO/MD PMRC said: “PMRC is delighted to partner with HBL Islamic Banking for this Sukuk.
“The funds raised under this Sukuk are important for the promotion of the Islamic housing finance market.
“I am confident this will be beneficial in the growth of fixed-rate, low-cost housing for the end consumers.”
Muhammad Afaq Head HBL Islamic Banking said: “HBL Islamic Banking is pleased to be collaborating with PMRC in the placement of the Rs1 billion Sukuk.
“The funds will be used to promote financing in the housing sector of Pakistan with a special focus on low-cost housing initiatives.
“This will enable us to play our part in the economic development of the country.”
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday allowed banks to charge a minimal fee on high-value transactions of Interbank Fund Transfer (IBFT).
The central bank in a statement said that the new instructions allow banks and other service providers to charge a minimal fee on high-value transactions while protecting and encouraging the low-income segments of population to continue using digital transactions free of cost.
The SBP directed banks to provide free of cost digital fund transfer services to individual customers up to, at least, a minimum aggregate sending limit of Rs25,000 per month per account/wallet. However, banks may choose to set this aggregate limit at a higher amount as well.
This would allow individual customers to make as many free fund transfer transactions remaining within their aggregate monthly limit of free transfers.
For transactions above the aggregate limit of Rs25,000 per account in a month, banks may charge individual customers, a transaction fee of no more than 0.1% of the transaction amount or Rs200, whichever is lower.
This will enable service providers to recover part of costs they incur on providing inter-bank fund transfer service and build sustainable and innovative business models.
Nevertheless, the new instructions encourage banks to provide free of cost digital fund transfer services to their customers to promote adoption of digital payments in the country.
SBP has also advised banks that all digital fund transfer transactions between different accounts within the same bank (intra-bank fund transfers) shall remain free. Further, incoming interbank fund transfer transactions shall also remain free. SBP has further directed banks to ensure proper disclosure of charged and free IBFT amounts along with applicable fees to their customers by sending regular notifications through SMS, apps and email. After every digital transaction, banks are required to send free of charge SMS to their customers on their registered mobile numbers intimating them about the transaction amount and the charges being recovered.
In order to provide seamless digital banking services to the public, SBP has further advised banks to remove any limits on the number of fund transfer transactions on their customer accounts/wallets unless there are genuine concerns related to AML/CFT or frauds.
To cope with the extraordinary situation of lockdowns amid Covid-19 Pandemic in 2020, SBP advised banks and other service providers in March 2020 to offer free of cost Inter Bank Fund Transfer (IBFT) services to all their customers regardless of the size of transaction. The objective was to facilitate bank customers to meet their banking services needs through online services during exceptionally difficult times and to avoid in person interaction to curb the spread of COVID. This step resulted in an overwhelming response by customers, with internet and mobile banking transactions more than doubling in Q2FY21 over the last year.
The SBP appreciates the support of all service providers for this initiative by allowing free of cost interbank fund transfer services to the public without recovering their operational cost and incurring substantial revenue losses.
It is encouraging that the Covid-19 situation has improved significantly and despite fluctuating number of cases the overall conditions now allow relaxations in mobility restrictions while following proper SOPs. In this backdrop, SBP reviewed the current IBFT pricing mechanism and has made some changes to ensure that free of charge IBFT services are provided by banks and other financial institutions on a sustainable basis.