SBP should disburse pending claims of R&D fund

KARACHI - FPCCI Standing Committee of Value Added Textile Products Chairman Bilal Mulla has urged the State Bank of Pakistan to disburse Rs 1.5532 billion pending claims of Research and Development (R&D) fund to the textile and apparel sector, which already laying with SBP since Feb 2009.
Bilal Mulla told that the SBP had estimated an amount of Rs 10 billion pending claims of R & D support fund for shipments made up to June 30, 2008 to garments, home textile and fabric sectors.
To clear the pending claims, the Finance Ministry had disbursed rupees four billion to the SBP in February 2009 for onward payment at rate of 40 percent to individual exporters against their R&D claims. The last date for submission of these claims was fixed at March 25, 2009 for all goods shipped till June 30, 2008, he said.
The SBP received total claims of Rs 6.117 billion against estimated figure of Rs 10 billion and disbursed 40 percent amount of the claim of each individual claimant. Thus Rs 2.446 billion were disbursed out of Rs 4 billion received by the SBP. This shows that the central bank still holds a balance of Rs 1.5532 billion since last 4 months.
Bilal Mulla has asked the SBP to immediately release the amount of 1.5532 billion on pro-rata basis amongst the claimants. He has also proposed that the SBP should issue post-dated cheques of entire amount of further pending claims, so that the exporters can discount the post-dated cheques with their bank and solve their liquidity issues.