Daily Times

Private sector credit offtake during July-December period of the current financial year 2021-22 reached Rs1,013 billion against Rs344.17 billion in the same period last year, showing a growth of 194 percent on a year-on-year basis.

The growth in private sector borrowing shows increasing private sector confidence and investment and a strong growth momentum in the economy, PM said in his tweet a few days ago.

The State Bank of Pakistan in its Quarterly Compendium said that the healthy growth in credit to the private sector is quite encouraging, as it will prop up the low credit incidence in Pakistan as measured by the domestic private credit to GDP ratio.

Moreover, SBP’s refinance schemes announced in the wake of Covid-19, particularly the Temporary Economic Refinance Facility (TERF), have been supporting the private sector credit growth in the last few quarters. Going by the SBP data, the private sector borrowed Rs766.2 billion in the previous fiscal year while in FY20, the total amount was Rs196.36 billion.

Conventional banks played a major role in increasing credit disbursements from their own sources as credit off-take from conventional banking branches jumped by 3.5x to Rs706.37 billion during 1HFY22 against Rs199.38 billion in the corresponding period year.

Islamic banks disbursed Rs124 billion worth of credit to the private sector, against Rs82.59 billion in the same period last year, showing an increase of 50pc YoY.