KARACHI, June 8: The customers should now be ready to receive another charge on their utility bills as the utility companies would pay additional amount to banks for collection of bills.

It was agreed in a meeting of the chief executives of banks and utility companies held here on Thursday, with SBP governor Dr Shamshad Akhtar in the chair, that the utility companies would pay charges to banks for rendering the services of collection of utility bills.

A separate service level agreement would be signed between the banks and the utility companies, according to an SBP press release.

The SBP said that the meeting decided the thorny issue of service charges between the banks and the utility companies regarding the collection of utility bills which had been pending since 1997.

As per tradition, the consumers of electricity, gas and telephone should be ready to receive further addition of charges in their bills. Utility bills carry a number of charges like sales tax, surcharge, meter rent and line rent.

The private sector is not responsible alone for charging every expense from the customers but the government itself charges general public. In the budget for 2006-07 the government increased charges on withdrawal of cash from 0.1 per cent to 0.2 per cent. This tax had been levied on depositors’ money on which they had already paid all taxes including income tax.

Now the PTCL is private property with government shares and KESC is also in private sector. The gas companies are still in pubic sector. The customers should expect that all the three bills will carry additional charges.

Banks had been demanding Rs10 per utility bill and argued that the cost of service less than this amount was not feasible but the SBP never accepted this demand earlier.

The central bank said that over 7,200 branches of all the scheduled banks operating in the country would now collect utility bills.

The utility companies and the banks would inform the general public through an aggressive media campaign that now all bank branches would accept the utility bills.

It was also decided in the meeting that the banks would provide facility of drinking water and sheds at their branches for the consumers in accordance with the municipal laws.