ISLAMABAD: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Wednesday submitted in the Supreme Court a list of top 50 people and companies whose loans worth Rs 62.66 billion were written-off by public and private banks in the last two years.
A three-member Supreme Court bench consisting of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Ghulam Rabbani and Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday was hearing a suo motu case on waiving off of bank loans worth Rs 256 billion during the period from 1971 to 2009 under the Banking Companies Ordinance.
The court directed the SBP lawyer, Iqbal Haider, to convey to all banks, whose loans had been written off, to issue notices to major borrowers who had availed the opportunity. Haider told the court that he had filed details of top 50 write-offs of by banking sector and a list of loans written off under BPD-29.
The total written-off amount in the first category stood around Rs 47.109 billion, while in the second list the amount was Rs 15.556 billion. During the hearing, chief justice observed that all the loans could be returned if the SBP wanted to do so. He said people’s money would not be allowed to go to waste.
He said if “the guardians of the nation turn into looters, then the people definitely have a right to hold them accountable”. Haider replied that there would be serious repercussions of it and the entire economy would collapse.
The chief justice told the SBP lawyer that they needed the bank’s assistance in the recovery of the waived off and defaulted on loans. However, he told the court that from the year 1972 to June 2007, a total of 33 circulars had been issued, of which four were operative and the others were ancillary to them.
