Denying media reports that it had declared only certain individuals defaulters, the State bank of Pakistan on Friday said it had so far provided credit information of over 23,000 candidates contesting May 11 election to the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP).
A spokesman for the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) reaffirmed the banking regulator’s continued and full support to the ECP, saying it had to date provided to ECP credit information of over 23,000 candidates who had filed nominations to contest the forthcoming election.
The spokesman also categorically denied reports published in a section of press that it had declared only certain individuals loan defaulters.
The SBP spokesman pointed out that the regulator was only collecting, compiling and passing on information received from the financial institutions about the contesting candidates to the ECP.
He said in order to provide this information to the commission, SBP was utilising a fully automated system already in place called electronic Credit Information Bureau (eCIB).
The system enables the banks to submit credit data of all borrowers to eCIB electronically without any manual intervention by the central bank to ensure the correctness and authenticity of data.
“This system is fully computerised and foolproof and the data in the system cannot be altered by any official in the State Bank,” the spokesman said.
He said the contents and format for providing credit information about contesting candidates were finalised by the ECP in consultation with the SBP.
“The information about default relates to the unpaid obligations of the borrowers which are overdue by more than a year and are reported as such by the financial institutions to the eCIB. In order to ensure absolute impartiality, transparency and unbiased treatment, this totally objective time based criteria is followed and does not warrant exercise of any judgment on part of the SBP,” the spokesman added.
Will this so called foolproof system also include names of the defaulters since the defaulted loans are written off after a certain period of time,which in many cases removes the names from the list.I would be interested to hear the response from the ECP.There really should be 2 lists,one for the people who still owe and the other who had the loans written off against them.
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