KHANEWAL - National Savings Pakistan Director General Zafar Muhammad Sheikh has disclosed that total domestic assets of national savings reached the historic figure of Rs2,300 billion.
Talking to the newsmen, The NSP DG claimed that when he assumed the charge as DG, the total assets of national savings were Rs1,000 billion, adding that in a span of only five years the figure had risen to Rs2,300 billion, recording an increase of Rs1,300 billion. The NSP DG has been running the state-run financial body under the control of Federal Finance Ministry and has turned the organisation around in a short span of time.
Giving the details of achievements by NSS, he enumerated the following: a) Successful Launch of Government’s first ever listed tradable bond “NSB” which has strengthened the secondary market of debt securities and establishment of “Bond Management Unit” for management and launching of secondary market bonds; b) issuance of Rs 25,000 Prize Bond, within thirty days Rs 20 billion were invested by public in this bond against the target of Rs 5 billion; c)    Launching of Short Term Certificates from 1st July-12; d)   To promote the saving habit among young generation, Rs 100 Student Welfare Prize Bond has been launched from 16th November 2012; e)    Computerization of 108 National Savings’ Offices including 89 pilot National Savings Centres; and f) Due to IT programme, the with holding tax raised from Rs 2.23 billion in 2009 to Rs 7.29 billion in 2012.
The DG informed that he had given a unique idea of utilising the NSS as major source of funding for nation building projects as well because the same was being done by the savings banks of Turkey, Brazil, Argentina and other South American countries.
Quoting Bhasha Dam, he said it was a big project and very hard to start due to financial constraint but could be constructed if the option of funding through national savings was taken into account.
He said the NSP’s main objective was to bring the nation on the intended objective of ‘habit of saving’ specially the students who had been brought into ‘saving net’ by issuing prize bond of only 100 rupees denomination.
To a question, he claimed that NSP was the single source of funding for the government, adding that NSP had proposed to expand saving ratio up-to 20 per cent like Bangladesh and India.