The other commercial banks have whereas seen their bad debts against personal loans swelling to new highs during the recent years, the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) Monday boasted to have disbursed over Rs 210 billion since 2002 with a negligible 1.6 percent infection ratio.
Also, the NBP jubilantly declared to have its disbursements increased beyond Rs 30.578 billion against “Cash in Gold”, another consumer financing the bank offers to the middle class borrowers against the borrowers’ jewelry, “the best friend of women”.
Further, the bank also witnessed an increase of 52 percent or $ 254.734 million in its $ 741 million contribution in the national kitty on account of worker remittances the bank channeled during Jan-Sep 2012. These receipts were against $486.243 million of the same period in 2011.
Another milestone the bank claims to have achieved is exceeding the central bank’s Rs 44 billion target on agriculture financing that made the NBP second largest disburser of the farm loans after ZTBL that has disbursed Rs 66 billion. Monday saw the NBP officials, here at a local hotel, announcing to have remodeled and re-launched two of the bank’s flagship consumer banking products named “NBP Advance Salary” and “Cash in Gold” by increasing the volume of financing.
According to Adnan Adil Hussain, head of NBP’s consumer and retail banking division, the bank under the remodeled regime had enhanced its financing limit from Rs 490,000 to Rs 1 million and Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 against 10 gram of the deposited gold respectively for the Advance Salary and Cash in Gold products.
Adil was flanked by other divisional heads including Senior Vice President Farooq Hasan, Ahmed Liaquat, Tariq and others.
“We have the accounts of around 1.8 million permanent government employees of which some 1.5 million have so far got loans worth over Rs 200 billion,” he told the well-attended press briefing.
“There is no condition of grades (of the employees),” Adil added.
The ratio of Non-Performing Loans (NPLs) against the bank’s personal loans stands at a nominal 1.6 percent against 15 percent of the market as the repayment mode against Advance Salary loans is based on monthly at-source deductions from the borrowers’ NBP account in 60 “easy” installments.
“We don’t ask about the purpose of financing. Unlike other loans, its processing is speedy as if you have the required documents complete the money is transferred in 3 to 4 days,” Adil said.
About Cash in Gold, the NBP official said the product had the non-mark up based one and was introduced viewing the countrymen’s “cultural instinct” of preserving gold ornaments as a sign of tradition. “Gold has always been the best friend of women in our tradition,” Adil said.
He said through the product the bank was able to avoid hoarding of the precious metal which is returned to the borrowers, as it is, after complete repayment. Adil told a questioner that the bank was also weighing its options to extend the financing facility to the contractual government employees. “In 2013 we plan to increase financing under Advance Salary by Rs 10 billion. And the facility would also cover the contract employees,” the banker said.
Senior Vice President Farooq Hasan said financing limits of the two products was revised upward sensing the pressing needs of the country’s public sector employees.
