Asia Development Bank grants technical aid to Pakistan
Pakistan Times Foreign Desk Report

MANILA (Philippines): Asia Development Bank (ADB) has approved technical aid worth of 2,90,000 Dollars for Pakistan in order to develop its transport policy, a report said on Monday.

As the ADB says, the grant would be use to establish relations between government and private sectors in order to develop infrastructure.

ADB Country Director, Marshoq Ali Shah said that the funding would be helpful to facilitate everyone in the country.

Assist for SME

Yet another report says that the Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a foreign loan of US$200 million for the restructuring, revival, and development of the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector in Pakistan.

SME Bank's commercial banking division vice president.Sohail Ishtiaq Khan, says that a major chunk of the loan will be invested into SME Bank for reviving of sick units besides and allowing fresh lending to intending borrowers in its eight selected branches throughout the country.

Major Campaign

The bank had launched a major campaign for the recovery of Rs 13 billion (US$212.8 million) defaulted loans, which had been inherited by the bank from the defunct Regional Development Finance Corporation (RDFC) and Small Business Finance Corporation (SBFC) over three years ago, he said.

The recovery had been entrusted to three reputed firms in the beginning of the current year and Khan disclosed that they had been able to recover about Rs 3 billion so far.

The Defaulters

As Khan says, there were 3,800 defaulters in Sindh province who had to pay Rs 590 million to the bank, 65 per cent of which has been recovered so far.

The total default money in Sindh province was registered more than Rs 1 billion and the number of defaulters was also more than 6000, which has now been considerably lessened, he said.

Khan said the government had allowed the SME Bank to launch a commercial banking service from January-2005 and was confident that it would help the bank play a pivotal role in the banking sector, especially for the benefit of small and medium businessmen.●