Top guns got Rs 54bn loans written off
By Rauf Klasra The News dated 23-10-2007

ISLAMABAD: As the present government completes its five-year term in office on November 15, it has been officially disclosed in a secret report that the top guns of Pakistan got Rs 53.499 billion bank loans written off on the basis of a decision taken by the financial team of Gen Pervez Musharraf in October 2002.

This shocking disclosure has been made in a secret report submitted before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the National Assembly which has been requested to take up the issue at requested to take up the issue at the earliest to know the reasons behind such a massive loss to the public exchequer facilitating the privileged of the present government.

As the present government would claim to be the first in the history of Pakistan that has completed five years in office, at the same time it would also be 'credited' with writing off such an unprecedented amount of loans within its five years in office to facilitate top guns of the regime.

The report shows that a total of 50,000 persons including politicians, civil and military business concerns and business tycoons of Karachi, Lahore and other areas were the direct beneficiaries of this massive favour.

Two sitting chief ministers of the provinces and their families having big business concerns and stakes are also beneficiaries of these written off loans whose details would be discussed in the committee meeting.
 
Although in the past, reports of written off loans have been appearing at different forums including the National Assembly, this is the first time that the total written off amount has come to surface.

The chief minister of a province whose family owns sugar mills, also got loans written off under this scheme. The chief minister of another province got loans written off outstanding against his ghee mills. Even some foreign firms and multinational companies and a private bus service operating from Lahore to different cities of Punjab were also extended this facility.

Earlier, soon after elections in October 2002, the then finance minister Shaukat Aziz and his financial team at the State Bank approved a 'written off loan scheme' in the same month (October 2002) after certain top politicians of the government put them under pressure to ease financial burden of loans from their business concerns.

In the garb of writing off non-performing loans of small businessmen, these top guns quietly got billions of rupees written off. An official of the PAC confirmed to The News that a report has been received containing the details of loans written off during the last five years.

Copy of the report available with The News shows that soon after the October 2002 elections, General Pervez Musharraf's financial team decided to launch a scheme to write off loans of the big guns as it set the minimum limit of written off loans at Rs0.5 million. This 0.5 million condition deprived small growers and small businessmen of this scheme and only big guns were the beneficiaries.

The report said that prudent banking practices and prudential regulations issued by the State Bank required securing loans through best guarantees, viable credit approvals, proper documentations and effective monitoring and follow up to avert flow of cases of non-performing loans. On the contrary, cases of non-performing loans were allowed to be accumulated by the banks and the SBP.

Instead of launching an effective campaign for recovery of such loans, the SBP issued an incentive scheme to the banks/DFIs in October 2002 for writing off NPL of the organizations showing "loss" for three years or more. The NPL for the purpose of the scheme were divided into three categories: category A included NPL up to Rs0.5 million, category B included NPLs ranging from Rs0.5 million to Rs2.5 million whereas category C included more than Rs2.5 million. The big political families and top guns exploited the third category of the written off loans to get billions of rupees outstanding against them written off from the banks.

However, the report has pointed out that for the settlement of B and C category cases the banks/DFIs were required to recover maximum possible amounts on the basis of outstanding amount vis-‡-vis forced sale of available assets. The purpose of the scheme was to clean the balance sheets owned by banks/DFIs to make them ready for privatisation.

As a result of the scheme, the banks/DFIs settled over 50,000 cases involving outstanding amount of RS74.879 billion whereas only Rs11 billion could be recovered. The report claims that the scheme resulted in realization of only 15.15% of the outstanding loans but major portion of the loans was either written off or could not be recovered.

Meanwhile, the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP) in its report to PAC has opined that this practice resulted in encouraging defaulters with an extraordinary financial burden on the public exchequer.

The report said the shocking written-off loans issue was raised with the Ministry of Finance and SBP management. The matter was also discussed in subsequent meetings in the recent past with the last one held in March 2007.

Meanwhile, an SBP official has argued that the writing off of loans in the banking sector was under a policy guideline issued vide circular 29 and that the losses mentioned by audit did not pertain to the SBP.
 
But, the AGP in its report has observed that such a huge write off may be looked into which was made possible due to circular No 29 of SBP and recoveries be made from the plunderers of public exchequer.

Talking to The News, Minister of State for Finance Omar Ayub strongly defended the policy of the government to introduce a scheme to help the borrowers settle their non-performing loans (NPLs) with the banks including the National Bank.

He said that these NPLs were settled in the light of circular No 29 issued by the State Bank. Omar said, a total of 50,414 borrowers availed the facility of settling their loans under this scheme which he confirmed was introduced in October 2002 after general elections.

Omar said that these decisions were taken by the boards of these banks that were quite independent and were not under the influence of the government. He said actually these non-performing loans were becoming a burden on the banks itself so the decision was taken to rather settle them after offering them a package.

Omar did not subscribe to the notion that top guns of the government including chief ministers or ministers had got their loans written off under this scheme. He also rejected the impression that these loans were written off as a bribe both to the politicians and big businessmen.

When told that even NBP had written off loans outstanding against some top politicians, Omar replied, "We need to understand that banks were deciding those cases in their own business interests without caring for pressure from any side".