ISLAMABAD, Dec 16 (APP):Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar Monday told the National Assembly that the government was negotiating to get the loan of $ 5.5 billion, taken from Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar, rolled over on the same terms and conditions, initially decided with these countries.
Speaking during the question hour, he said Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Qatar had provided deposits of $ three billion, $ two billion and $ 500 million respectively to the State Bank of Pakistan during the tenure of the present government.
These deposits had been placed with the State Bank of Pakistan and the countries were charging three percent concessional interest rate. The different maturity dates of these deposits were from November 2019 to January 2021.
The minister said the commercial bank lending by the government would be curtailed and the lending would be done more from the bilateral and multilateral donors.
To another question of MNA Chaudhry Barjees Tahir, the minister said that the federal government had introduced Direct Credit System (DCS) for payment of pension.
In this system, the amount of pension of the pensioner was deposited directly in his bank account, opened in any scheduled bank and National Saving Centre for this purpose. It enabled a pensioner to draw monthly pension without making a pension payment claim at the bank.
The pensioner with this option gets the ATM card issued from his bank and uses it for drawing the pension according to his convenience.
He said all the banks were issuing ATM cards and these cards were replaced by them at the expiry free of cost.
