KARACHI - Country’s trade and industry have strongly rejected the Monetary Policy announced by Governor State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Saturday.
The President Lasbela Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Vice President FPCCI, Ismail Suttar said that SBP governor despite all requests and SOS calls has refrained from lowering the discount rate leaving all the business community to continue to suffer. While commenting on unchanged Monetary Policy by the central bank he said that the SBP had to make a drastic cut at least by 250 to 300 basis points in discount rates demanded by the trade and industry across the country but keeping the rate at 10 per cent is a cruel act. “Now where should we get affordable bank financing for industrial sector and to keep our factories wheel rolling” asked Ismail.
The LCCI President said that industry was expecting at least a cut of 100 basis points to bring it to single digit but the SBP remained unmoved. He said that at this juncture when the industry was suffering due to skyrocketing inputs and energy crisis, unchanged interest rate is no service to the country or the dwindling economy. He said it was very unfortunate that they had failed to learn any lesson from the tighter monetary policy stance adopted by the State bank of Pakistan in the yester years.
He said that it’s pity that when the entire world is keeping interest rates at the lowest possible level, SBP is maintaining it at the highest level maintaining a big hurdle in the way of economic revival.  He said despite higher inflation all the major economies had either curtailed or are in the process of reducing high interest rates to protect their economies. The LCCI acting president said that the State Bank of Pakistan should understand that it’s continued tighter stance was inflicting a very heavy loss as the economy had already paid a very high price because of high interest rate.