ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, Tuesday, approved two important bills along with amendments. These bills included Financial institutions (Recovery of Finances) (Amendment) Bill, 2016 and Credit Bureau Act 2015 (The Credit Bureau Amendment Bill 2016).
Both the amendment bills have already been passed by the National Assembly and Committee is bound to present its report on both the bills before the Senate by July 18 and August 01, this year respectively.
The committee reviewed and assessed the report presented by the representatives of the Ansari and Khokhar AG Legal Karachi about different clauses of the bill.
The Senate Finance and Revenue Committee met here with Chairman Saleem Mandviwala in the chair to discuss a long agenda besides both the amendment bills.
According to the draft of the Financial institutions (Recovery of Finances) (Amendment) Bill, 2016) primarily to deals with the recovery process of the bank loans and loan defaults.
It provides a comprehensive legal framework on foreclosure specially Section 15 which empowered the financial institutions to sale the mortgaged property.
The proposed amendments are meant to facilitate recovery process of bank loans so that loan defaults and incidence of written off loans could be minimized.
The pecuniary limit of High Court cases is proposed to be enhanced to Rs100 million to reduce the burden of cases on superior courts.
The loans availed from Pakistani banks in other countries would also fall under recovery ordinance. The willful default would be an offence under the ordinance.
The loans written off for reasons other than merit. would be open to trial at any stage without application of any limitation, knowingly submission of false information in the court would render the parties ineligible to defend the case and frivolous filing would be discouraged with fines.
The smooth recovery process would result in groom of healthy credit culture in the country, reduce risks of default and writing off of loans and would also create additional funds for lending to new segments of borrowers.
These measures taken together would stabilize the financial system and contribute to sustainable economic growth in the country. This Bill is designed to achieve the aforesaid Purpose.
Similarly, the draft of the Credit Bureau Amendment Bill 2016 says that purpose of the amendments in the Credit Bureaus Act 2015, is to ensure that the existing legislation is in conformity with the provisions of BCO 1962 and international best practices.
The amendments in the Act are proposed for existing requirements of credit information report issued by credit bureaus to be verified by the State Bank of Pakistan, has been omitted as the credit the information report shall in the most of the cases be accessed electronically by financial institutions that have data sharing arrangements with the credit bureaus.
