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: Pak-Qatar Takaful Group has decided to use digital media to offer its products and services in the wake of COVID-19 in order to provide the best possible convenience to its valuable members and customers.
(more…)
KARACHI: The Pak Rupee gained 19 paisas against dollar on Wednesday owing to improved inflows of export receipts, dealers said.
The rupee ended Rs166.76 to the dollar from previous day’s closing of Rs166.95 in interbank foreign exchange market.
Currency experts said that during the past few days the demand for dollar was on the higher side resulting in ease in rupee value.
They further said that the inflows of export receipts and from international financial institutions had helped the rupee to gain the value.
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has decided to reduce the mark up rates on temporary economic refinance facility (TERF) to five percent from 7 percent and on long term financing facility (LTFF) from non-textile sector to five percent from six percent.
The central bank on Wednesday said that taking cognizance of the negative fallout of COVID-19 Pandemic for the economy, SBP has been constantly taking steps to safeguard the businesses and households and a reduction in the policy rate has been a key step since March 2020.
SBP has reduced the policy rate by 625 basis points since 17th March, 2020 to 7 percent.
To extend the benefits of this reduction in the policy rate to the users of its refinance schemes, SBP has now decided to align the end user markup rates on two of its refinance schemes for promoting investment in the country.
Temporary Economic Refinance Facility (TERF): SBP introduced this facility to provide stimulus to the economy by supporting new investment and balancing, modernization and restructuring (BMR) of the existing projects.
To further improve the incentive under the scheme, SBP has lowered the end user mark-up rates from existing 7 percent to 5 percent.
SBP will now be providing refinance to banks at 1 percent with banks’ maximum margin of 4 percent. Further, SBP has also allowed the TERF facility in cases where LCs/Inland LCs were opened prior, but retiring after the introduction of the scheme on March 17, 220.
These measures, in the backdrop of earlier policy action of allowing BMR under TERF, are expected to further support the economic activity, new long term investment and employment generation.
Under this scheme, up till 2nd July 2020, Rs10.5 billion have been approved by banks for 21 projects.
Long Term Financing Facility (LTFF): LTFF is one of the oldest refinance schemes of SBP under which financing is available for export-oriented projects for purchase of imported and locally manufactured new plant and machinery.
In March, 2020 SBP opened the LTFF to all sectors across the board. Earlier the end user markup rate under this scheme were 5 percent for textile sector and 6 percent for non-textile sectors.
State Bank has now reduced its refinance rate for non-textile sector by 1 percent and therefore the end user rate for all sectors across the board will be 5 percent.
It is expected that the above measures will help facilitate long term investment in both domestic and export market.
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has appointed 12 financial institutions as primary dealers for government securities for the fiscal year 2020/2021.
The central bank said that applications were invited for selection of primary dealers for the Financial Year (FY) 2020-2021 vide DMMD Circular Letter No. 01 dated May 15, 2020 from all Banks, Development Finance Institutions, Investment Banks and Listed Brokerage Houses.
The central bank received twelve applications for appointment of Primary Dealers of Government Securities (PIB & MTB).
Upon evaluation of each applicant’s performance under the criteria laid down in the aforesaid rules, the following institutions have been selected as Primary Dealers of Government Securities (PIBs & MTBs) for FY 2020-2021
1. HABIB BANK LIMITED
2. NATIONAL BANK OF PAKISTAN
3. BANK AL-FALAH LIMITED
4. JS BANK LIMITED
5. ALLIED BANK LIMITED
6. PAK OMAN INVESTMENT COMPANY LIMITED
7. MCB BANK LIMITED
8. UNITED BANK LIMITED
9. FAYSAL BANK LIMITED
10. STANDARD CHARTERED BANK (PAKISTAN) LIMITED
11. CITI BANK N.A (PAKISTAN OPEARTIONS)
12. THE BANK OF PUNJAB
Top three performing PDs during FY 2019-2020 are as under:
Habib Bank Limited
National Bank of Pakistan
Bank Al-Falah Limited
KARACHI: The deposits of banking systems have reached record high at Rs16.23 trillion by end of June 30, 2020, according to data released by State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday.
The deposits of baking system registered 12.24 percent growth by end of June 2020 as compared with Rs14.46 trillion by end of same month last year.
Analysts at Topline Securities explained that during second quarter of 2020, the deposits have increased by higher-than-largely-expected 7 percent, as Net Domestic Assets (NDA) of the Banking System increased by 6 percent during this period, on the back of 11 percent increase in the government borrowings for budgetary support.
Investments have grown by 40 percent YoY and 3 percent MoM to Rs10.68 trillion by end June 2020. The same is up 21 percent YTD (vs. 6 percent YTD growth by end March 2020).
As a result, IDR has increased to 66 percent in June 2020 from 53 percent in June 2019 and 61 percent in March 2020.
On the other hand, Advances have grown by just 1 percent YoY, and have actually declined by 2 percent MoM in June 2020 despite the aggressive cuts in interest rates by the Pakistan Central Bank since March 2020.
This is due to the impact of the pandemic COVID-19, which has caused the overall slowdown in the economic activity. In YTD 2020, advances are up 1 percent.
As a result, ADR has dropped to 51 percent in Jun-2020 from 56 percent in Jun-2019 and 55 percent in March 2020.
The Currency in Circulation (CIC) has increased by 17 percent in YTD 2020 to Rs6.19 trillion, with CIC as a percentage of M2 clocking in at 31 percent, above past 5-year average of 27 percent.
Going forward, the analysts expect deposit growth in the range of 10-11 percent during 2020 (vs. historical 3-year average growth of 11 percent), while they expect advances to grow by around 5 percent during the year (vs. historical average 3-year growth of 14 percent).
KARACHI: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has decided to extend the deferment of principal amount facility up till September 30, 2020, a statement said on Tuesday.
The central bank said that considering the fact that COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to stress the cash flow of small and medium sized businesses and households, SBP has decided to extend the Deferment of Principal Amount facility up till September 30, 2020.
This facility will however be available for Small & Medium Enterprise Financing, Consumer Financing, Housing Finance, Agriculture Finance and Micro financing only.
The facility is not being extended to corporates and commercial borrowers since a significant amount of their loans and advances has already been deferred.
It is expected that more businesses and households, who were not able to avail the facility, will benefit from this extension.
On March 26, 2020, amid growing concerns about the potential economic impact of the COVID–19 pandemic, SBP with the collaboration of Pakistan Banks Association (PBA) announced a comprehensive set of measures to help businesses and households to manage their finances.
Among these, a key measure was the deferment of principal amount of loans and advances by banks and DFIs.
Under this facility, businesses and households could request for the deferment of their loans and advances for a period of one year, albeit continuing to service the mark-up amount.
The measure also ensured that the deferment of principal will not affect borrower’s credit history and such facilities will not be reported as restructured/rescheduled in the credit bureau’s data.
This measure proved extremely helpful for borrowers and is evident from the fact that up till 3rd July 2020, banks deferred Rs593 billion of principal amount of loans of over 359 thousand borrowers.
A very large number of borrowers— 95 percent of total beneficiaries of this scheme, as of July 3, 2020 have been small borrowers including SMEs, consumer finance, and microfinance.
KARACHI: The Pak Rupee weakened by 23 paisas on Tuesday owing to demand for import and corporate payments.
The rupee ended at Rs166.95 to the dollar from previous day’s closing Rs166.72 in interbank foreign exchange market.
Currency experts said that due to enhanced economic activities after ease in lockdown the importers were seen active to purchase currency for foreign buying.
Further, they said that the demand for foreign currency was also seen from multinational and foreign companies to repatriate their profits after close of fiscal year ended June 30, 2020.
The rupee depreciated by around 74 paisas against dollar during first two days of this week.
KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday expand the refinance facility at lower rates for health sector in order to combat COVID-19.
On March 17, 2020, SBP introduced a refinance scheme, titled Refinance Facility to Combat Covid-19 (RFCC), to support the hospitals and health sector for providing services to directly fight against Covid-19.
Under this scheme, banks provide concessional loans at a maximum end-user rate of 3 percent for 5 years for hospitals and medical centers to purchase medical equipment and set up isolation wards for developing capacity and supporting the health sector in fight against COVID-19.
Since its inception up till 2nd July 2020, Rs 6.4 billion of concessional credit have been approved for hospitals and other eligible facilities to fight COVID-19.
Keeping in view the encouraging response and the potential to help developing the health facilities in the country, SBP has now expanded the scope of this refinance facility further.
The scheme now allows manufacturers of protective gears and equipment, including items such as masks, dresses, testing kits, hospital beds, ventilators etc. to avail financing under RFCC.
Moreover, to cope with the rising needs of the health facilities in general in the country, SBP has allowed hospitals serving patients even other than COVID-19 to avail this facility.
Refinance facility will be available for setting up or expansion of the existing hospitals fulfilling minimum specified standards.
For setting up new hospitals under this scheme, payments will be released by the banks on completing relevant milestones.
RFCC is highly subsidized facility where SBP provides refinance to banks at 0% whereas banks can keep a maximum margin of 3%. Some of the banks treating this as part of their CSR are keeping margins very low.
KARACHI: The Pak Rupee ended down by 51 paisas against the dollar on Monday owing to higher demand for import and corporate demand.
The rupee closed at Rs166.72 to the dollar from last Friday’s close of Rs166.21 in interbank foreign exchange market.
Currency experts said that the market was opened after two days weekly holidays which escalated the demand for dollar.
They said that the due to ease in lockdown the activities in foreign trade had been increased. The importers were placing orders in the international markets.
The experts hoped that the recent inflows from international financial institutions the rupee may recover.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country increased by $1.24 billion to $17.97 billion by week ended June 26, 2020, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Thursday.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country were at $16.73 billion by week ended June 19, 2020.
The official foreign exchange reserves of the SBP increased by $1.27 billion to $11.231 billion by week ended June 26, 2020. The official reserves of the central bank were at $9.961 billion a week ago.
The SBP said that during the week ended June 26, 2020, the central bank received around $2,046 million official inflows, including $737 million from World Bank, $503 million from Asian Development Bank, $500 million from Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and $300 million as GOP loan disbursement from China.
After incorporating government external debt payments of $ 809 million, SBP reserves increased by $ 1,270 million to $ 11,231 million.
During the current week, SBP has received additional $1,000 million as GOP loan disbursement from China.
These funds will be part of SBP weekly reserves data as of July 03, 2020 to be released on July 09, 2020.
KARACHI: The Pak Rupee gained 68 paisas against dollar on Friday after improvement in foreign exchange reserves of the country.
The rupee ended Rs166.21 to the dollar from previous day’s closing of Rs166.89 in interbank foreign exchange market.
Currency experts said that the lower demand for imports and inflows from international financial institutions helped the rupee to gain value.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country increased by $1.24 billion to $17.97 billion by week ended June 26, 2020, State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) said on Thursday.
The foreign exchange reserves of the country were at $16.73 billion by week ended June 19, 2020.
The official foreign exchange reserves of the SBP increased by $1.27 billion to $11.231 billion by week ended June 26, 2020. The official reserves of the central bank were at $9.961 billion a week ago.
The SBP said that during the week ended June 26, 2020, the central bank received around $2,046 million official inflows, including $737 million from World Bank, $503 million from Asian Development Bank, $500 million from Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and $300 million as GOP loan disbursement from China.
After incorporating government external debt payments of $ 809 million, SBP reserves increased by $ 1,270 million to $ 11,231 million.
During the current week, SBP has received additional $1,000 million as GOP loan disbursement from China.
These funds will be part of SBP weekly reserves data as of July 03, 2020 to be released on July 09, 2020.