PESHAWAR, July 14: NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani on Wednesday pledged to punish the people responsible for the sorry state of affairs in the Bank of Khyber
after a credit rating agency warned that 'unprovided credit losses continued to be a drag on the bank's profitability.'
Asked to comment on reports appearing in a section of the press about the bank's state of affairs, the chief minister said that he would not allow any political interference in the bank.
He was talking to newsmen at the oath-taking ceremony of acting governor, Mr Justice Mian Shakir Ullah Jan. The NWFP controls 87 per cent of shares in the bank while the remaining 13 per cent is owned by the German Development Bank (DEG).
The chief minister said that the BoK was a valuable asset of the province and no-one would be allowed to harm it. He said a meeting of the board of directors of the bank had been convened on Thursday which, after its deliberations, would submit a report to him.
He, however, denied reports about the BoK being in the midst of a crisis. "There is no crisis," he told a reporter. The chief minister warned, though, that whoever was found responsible for corruption or any other irregularity would not be spared.
"Be it a peon of the bank or its managing director, nobody will be spared," he said. "We will not allow anyone to hijack the BoK affairs on political grounds," he said while responding to another question.
In a letter addressed to the bank's managing director, the credit rater had warned that 'unprovided credit losses continued to be a major drag on the bank's profitability, along with expensive deposits.'
"Moreover, dependence on volatile sources of earnings needs to be reduced and core earnings need to be strengthened," the June 30 letter read. An official privy to the developments in the bank told Dawn that the board of directors' chairman had asked Finance Minister Sirajul Haq to sack the incumbent managing director 'in order to save the bank.'
The source said that the minister responded by saying that the sacking of the MD, hired only a few months ago, would send out a bad signal and create a negative image of the bank. This source said that the board of directors, in its meeting on Thursday, would review the bank's six-month performance and submit its report to the chief minister.
