NBP pledges soft loans under PM housing scheme

By Abdul Qadir Qureshi
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), which recently won a couple of prestigious Asian awards, has announced providing soft loans to the general public under the Prime Minister’s housing scheme, in order to let people build their own houses. 

The NBP President, Arif Usmani, during his speech on the Independence Day, hailed the PM housing initiative as a revolutionary programme which would improve the living standard of the common man and besides generating economic activity in the country. 

He added that the construction industry had great potential to grow and more than 40 other industries directly linked to it will also be booming with the housing programme. 

“As the premier government commercial bank of the country, NBP has recently gone through various policy, structural and technology upgrades which would start yielding within the next six months,” the NBP President remarked. 

“Coronavirus (COVID-19) has literally affected every sector and every organization. NBP, however, with its professional commitment and high national spirit has served the masses in the best possible manner,” he acknowledged while promise to announce special allowance for the top performers shortly. 

He urged the bank employees to continue working will total sincerity and professionalism to earn more goodwill for their organization and for their own satisfaction for their contribution will facilitate in bringing prosperity to the country. 

“Since its inception, NBP has been playing a pivotal role in the development of the country. The bank primarily established for jute financing has now been playing a prominent role in every sector of the economy. Serving the nation with more than 1,500 branches, NBP was catering to every aspect of banking including Islamic banking, corporate banking, trade finance, agriculture, SMEs and retail, treasury and home remittances,” Arif Usmani highlighted.

“We proudly discharge our responsibility of functioning as government treasury and have the largest rural network in banking industry. NBP had taken a lead role in government initiated lending and goodwill programs like PM Youth Entrepreneurship scheme and now PM housing scheme,” he observed. 

“In order to manage the foreign exchange need of the country, NBP has taken initiatives for promoting remittances through legal channels that included collaboration with Pakistan Post which created the largest remittance payment network in the country with over 2,000 payment locations,” he continued.

“The customized products in collaboration with Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment have been launched to provide banking facilities to intending emigrant workers. Resultantly, NBP’s market share in remittance business along with remittances volume had considerably increased in last two years,” Arif Usmani shared. 

He didn’t mince words in stating that significant population of the country was below the poverty line and promoting SMEs would be greatly help address this situation. 

“The government of Pakistan was making all out efforts to address these economic challenges and NBP was committed to deliver on the national agenda of inclusive development,” he reiterated.