ISLAMABAD, Oct 22: Federal Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Tuesday that the country’s economy had been put on the right track, and this fact was also being acknowledged by the international monetary institutions and other countries.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony of a three-day convention of regional managers of Agricultural Development Bank of Pakistan (ADBP), the minister said Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad during his recent visit also acknowledged the fact.

“Your country had progressed a lot from the situation of bankruptcy when the financial managers in routine used to take ‘begging bowl’ and visit a country of their convenience to get a loan to run administration on month by month basis,” Shaukat quoted Mahathir as saying.

He said he had just returned from Saudi Arabia and found the people there appreciating Pakistan’s financial performance and promised maximum help provided it continued to maintain reform programme.

The convention which is being attended by 49 regional managers from all over the country will review the last three years performance as well as discuss ways and means to make the bank a professional financial institution.

The minister said the government could not keep on injecting more and more money into the banking sector nor the State Bank was happy with the loan recovery performance of the banks.

Shaukat however assured the government’s help in bank’s restructuring and reorganization and for putting it on professional lines so as to accelerate the wheel of progress and help alleviate poverty in rural areas.

The government, he said, was conscious of main constraint being shortage of irrigation water required for higher agriculture growth and had launched several irrigation projects costing Rs170 billion.

He called upon the ADBP authorities to change their mode of operation from a mere credit provider to a holistic approach which adds value and enrichment to agricultural sector, with focus on funding value chains by promoting high yield crops, exports, storage, transportation and logistics.

It should also help create viable marketing chains to move produce from farm to market, including production, grading, packing, branding, distribution, storage and advertising, he said.

Referring to the ongoing restructuring of the bank, the minister said it should not confine to reducing the number of employees alone as the most important asset of an organization was its human capital. Instead, for the success of the process it was imperative that the field force understood its role by recognising devastating impact of bad lending practices in the past.

He said many autonomous institutions, including PIA, Pakistan Steel, Pakistan Railways, Wapda and NBP, have shown tremendous turnaround in the last couple of years because of their management’s efficient policies and there was no reason the ADBP could not regain its lost status among the leading development institutions of the country.