Addressing a press conference in Karachi, Governor State Bank Dr. RezaBaqir has said that inflation is threatening but is likely to remain withinthe target.
He said the economic growth in the country has boosted and the confidenceof the business community has strengthened.
“The government also took some serious decisions regarding the country’seconomy after it was disturbed by the coronavirus pandemic,” said theGovernor State Bank. Talking about the last Monetary Policy, Baqir theeconomy has been improving since June’s Monetary Policy and the economicsituation looks a bit better than before.
He said the Monetary Policy has also seen a slight increase in theinflation rate, and the rate is expected to stay between 7% to 9% this year.
According to him, the country’s economy is slowly recovering, and thefederal government’s package for the Corona pandemic is 1580 billion rupeeswhich is 3.8% of the GDP.
“Before the corona pandemic, interest rates were 13.25%, In two and a halfmonths, interest rates have been cut by 6.25%,” announced Baqir, addingthat late repayment from banks was facilitated.
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He further said that delays in repaying loans to banks in the wake of theCorona pandemic have benefited business and home borrowers for Rs 640billion a year. However, according to him, Rs 184 billion was not repaidfrom the rescheduled mugs of loans taken from the banks.
He said that loans of Rs 207 billion were provided for the non-employmentscheme. According to him, there was a lot of focus on small businesses andthe employment scheme provided loans to 50% of small scale industries.
Giving further details, the State Bank Governor stated that cheap loans tohospitals were introduced in the month of March, and Rs 69 billion weregiven to hospitals. “In total, Rs 1580 billion was released for theprevention of corona pandemic,” he stated.
