Tuesday, February 02, 2010

Fun & Games in the Land of the Pure

Lifted directly from bharat-rakshak forum:

Rs256bn loans written off since 1971, SC told

The State Bank informed the Supreme Court on Tuesday that commercial banks had written off loans of up to Rs256 billion

Of the amount written off...loans of Rs500,000 or more ... Rs202.5 billion due from 22,021 borrowers from 1997 to 2009. {Dont get fooled by "from 1971". This is the interesting number. So from '71 to 97 Rs. 55 billion has been written off. It is likely that these were genuine defaults.}

The report submitted by Iqbal Haider requested the court to ignore an earlier list compiled by 33 banks and four development finance institutions (DFIs) suggesting that Rs193.4 billion owed by 93 borrowers had been written off. { :rotfl: So 22,021-93 = 21928 borrowers defaulted on the rest of the 9.1 billion. Most likely these were corner chai dukaan owners who genuinely couldnt pay their loan because they went out of business. The 93 who owe Rs193.4 billion are the real culprits. The rest of the numbers are just "padding" to make sure the 93 are "lost". More over, how can one "ignore" submission to a court? Was it a lie? then it is perjury! was it incompetence of willful negligence? Then they have committed contempt of court!}

50,427 people, including politicians, civil and military business concerns and business tycoons of Karachi, Lahore and other cities had been favoured through the scheme to waive off outstanding loans in 2002. Soon after the October 2002 elections, the then finance minister Shaukat Aziz and his financial team at the SBP approved the loan write-off scheme after succumbing to pressures exerted by certain top leaders of the then ruling party to ease financial burden on their businesses.