KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Friday held a meeting with the group heads of operations of all commercial banks to address the distribution of fresh currency notes, uninterrupted availability of ATM services during Eid holidays and issues relating to deduction of Withholding Tax (WHT) on bank transactions.
The meeting was co-chaired by Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) Group Executive Director Ashraf Khan and SBP-Banking Services Corporation (SBP-BSC) Managing Director Qasim Nawaz along with other high officials of SBP.
SBP highlighted that to meet the needs of general public on Eid-ul-Fitr, sixteen SBP-BSC field offices have started distribution of fresh currency notes. Besides, SBP-BSC has provided fresh currency notes of Rs141 billion to commercial banks for onward provision to the public.
This supply is in addition to the fresh notes provided to the public from the counter of SBP-BSC and through new SMS-based mechanism. The banks were emphasised to ensure the availability of fresh currency notes at their counters.
The commercial banks were advised to meticulously comply with the SBP’s guidelines regarding management of ATM operations in order to ensure continuous availability of ATM services during Eid-ul-Fitr holidays.
The banks were stressed to make adequate back up arrangements for ensuring availability of ATM services round the clock and put in place comprehensive operating procedures to timely resolve the cases of cash replenishment, breakdown of ATMs, systems and network problems.
As a consequence of the recent tax amendments, SBP advised banks to ensure that the WHT should not be deducted from such person (tax filers) that are not subject to this tax. The banks should make arrangements to refund the deducted amount to such customers, if the amount is deducted from a tax filer. They were also advised to provide WHT statements to the customers.
The SBP briefed about its financial inclusion programme that envisages 50% increase in financial inclusion by 2020. In this regard, commercial banks were advised to expedite their readiness to launch Aasan Account for low risk profile customers with simplified due diligence procedures within the deadline of 31-07-2015.
SBP advised the banks that in case of non-compliance with the instructions, strict regulatory measures would be taken.
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