Acting President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Saif ur Rahman Khan has said that the importers and exporters were facing great problems in making advance payments due to SBP's restrictions on foreign exchange
Islamabad (Pakistan Point News / Online - 02nd January, 2020) Acting President, Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Saif ur Rahman Khan has said that the importers and exporters were facing great problems in making advance payments due to SBP's restrictions on foreign exchange .He said this at a seminar organized by ICCI in collaboration with State Bank of Pakistan organized an awareness session about foreign exchange operations and key developments of SBP related to digitalization of work processes and ease of doing business.
Speaking on the occasion, SBP's Director Exchange Policy Department ,Arshad Mehmood Bhatti said that the central bank had to place restrictions on advance payment in foreign exchange due to rising trade deficit, fast dwindling forex reserves and many other factors that had created imbalance in the economy.He said that SBP has allowed advance payment in foreign exchange to manufacturing industry up to 50 percent of letter of credit (LC) for import of raw material and spare parts.
He said that with the reduction in imbalances in economy, SBP would ease out restrictions on advance payments in FX and has already delegated advance payment up to $10,000 to commercial banks.He urged that business community should discourage the use of hundi or hawala that was harmful for the economy and use legal channels for foreign payments.Muhammad Shakeel Piracha, Director, Foreign Exchange Operations Department of SBP briefed the participants about online portal and automation of SBP processes.
He said that business community should complete documentary requirements in foreign exchange cases to avoid delay and informed them about the checklist of documents that was necessary to process such cases. He said that manual process of foreign exchange cases took 5-7 days and added that after the automation of such processes, hopefully by June 2020, processing time would be reduced.
