SC adjourns hearing of Rs54b write off loan case

ISLAMABAD—A three-member bench of the Supreme Court Tuesday adjourned the hearing of a suo-motu notice of Rs. 54 billion write off loan for Wednesday as amicus A.K.Dogar could not complete his arguments till the court time over.
A.K.Dogar who was appointed as amicus to assist the court on the said matter will also continue his arguments on Wednesday as the case was adjourned as part heard case. Counsel of State Bank of Pakistan, Syed Iqbal Haider has already completed his arguments on the last date of hearing.
The bench headed by Justice Muhammad Nawaz Abbasi said the case would be heard in detail and observed that in-discriminatory policy to write off loan worth billions would not be left unattended. Syed Iqbal Haider advocate as counsel of the State Bank of Pakistan has already said that banks decided to write off loan of Rs. 54 billion according to the decision of the settlement committee constituted by the State Bank of Pakistan.
He said that more than Rs. 16 billion had already been recovered according to the policy introduced by the settlement committee to recover the dead loan from more than 50 thousand borrowers which was due to pay since six years. The remaining amount Rs. 22 billion would be recovered from the borrowers in installments and in a period of three years. He apprised the court that this was a wrong impression that entire loan had been written off and said only 25 per cent of the loan plus mark up was written off after receiving 10 per cent of the entire settled loan advance in cash with undertaking to pay remaining amount within a period of three years in installments according to the agreed formula.
The case was taken up as a suo-motu notice taken by Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry over a news item published in “The News” regarding writing off loan of Rs. 54 billion by various banks of the country.

—Agencies