It gives me immense pleasure to review the performance of BSC for FY21.
The period experienced a spillover of last year’s challenges, which presented diverse dynamics, especially with regards to COVID-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, the BSC team continued to support SBP’s policy measures taken in FY20 to mitigate the risks to the economy and to control the damage brought about by multiple waves of the pandemic in FY21.
Foremost, BSC played an important role for implementation of various SBP’s targeted concessional
refinance schemes to combat COVID-19 pandemic. These schemes have provided a safeguard to workforce
against the risk of layoff, helped hospitals to strengthen their capacities, and laid a solid foundation for
medium to long term industrialization in the country. BSC also ensured same level of zeal and commitment
in the operational management of SBP’s traditional subsidized refinance schemes and inclusive
development finance initiatives vis-à-vis promoting financial literacy for broadening financial inclusion. I
would like to acknowledge BSC management’s efforts in helping the banks to improve service delivery
with respect to government’s low-cost-housing scheme ‘Mera Pakistan Mera Ghar (MPMG)’ whereby BSC
established an online portal as also dedicated helpdesks at all its offices to address complaints & queries of
general public. Moreover, monthly mystery shopping of designated banks for MPMG by BSC constantly
provided feedback to the banks, resulting in timely corrective actions, where required.
Further, BSC has also contributed its fair share in supporting SBP’s effort for enhancing utilization of digital financial services. Adopting wider use of ADCs in government collections witnessed significant growth, both in volume and value during the year. Continuing this trend, BSC operationally managed project on centralization of banks' accounts and direct credit to bank accounts for payments of internal & external stakeholders, and further augmented the scope of modern and automated payment system. A major development during the year was successful implementation of an online solution named FX RAS for submission of FX related cases by banks, which was complemented by banks’ own portals for their customers, providing an end-to-end digitalized process with complete tracking system to the banks and customers.
I am pleased with the progress BSC has made in optimizing its own operations, whereby currency processing and destruction is being completely automated on fast-track basis within BSC. Automation of currency operations will not only enhance our processing and destruction capacity but will also raise the quality of our banknotes in circulation to international standards. Furthermore, BSC has introduced BPR in its operations with focus to bring efficiency, optimize resources, enhance internal controls, improve service delivery to stakeholders, and to further strengthen the compliance with global AML/CFT regime.
On this note, I would also like to express my gratitude to the BSC Board of Directors in providing guidance and support to the organization with special mention to Managing Director BSC and his colleagues for coming up to our expectations in fulfilling mandate of the central bank.