THE State Bank of Pakistan publishes different useful reports, reviews, and working papers that discuss key economic and social issues as well as provide significant economic and financial data.

Considering their significance, various academic and research institutions in and outside the country access, download and use these reports for discussion, analysis, and research. However, there have been some cases where the SBP failed to publish these reports on time and, in a few cases, the time lapse spans a month to more than a year.

For instance, the last ‘Payment Systems Quarterly Review’ published by the Payment Systems Department, SBP was last uploaded in April 2014 at the SBP website. Since then no quarterly payment systems reviews have been uploaded. In addition to this delay, the format and the contents of the ‘Payment Systems Reviews’ are constantly being modified by the Payment Systems Department over the last two years without bringing any visible improvement in the quality and the utility of these quarterly reviews.

These unwarranted changes in the format and the contents of quarterly reviews, however, cause unnecessary confusions and create ambiguities for the scholarship or research community when investigating and analysing the state of payment systems in Pakistan.

The competent authority and the senior SBP management should play their role in bringing efficiency and ensuring timely publication of Payment Systems Quarterly Reviews for the benefit of the industry and the research community. Similarly, the reasons for discontinuity or any extraordinary delay in the publication of these and other quarterly reviews should regularly be shared with the stakeholders at the SBP website.

Aijaz A. Shaikh

Jyväskylä, Finland

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2015

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