ISLAMABAD, Oct 17: Despite a dip in the rate of profits in recent months, National Savings schemes fetched an investment of over Rs150 billion in July-September quarter of the current fiscal year against a target of Rs56.5 billion.

Director-General of National Savings Organisation, Zafar M Shaikh, told newsmen here on Wednesday that three instruments, namely ‘Special Saving Accounts’, ‘Regular Income Certificate’ and sale of prize bonds helped surpass the target by 85 per cent.

He was confident that the target of Rs225 billion set for the fiscal year 2012-13 would also be achieved.

The government has finally decided to float ‘Student Prize Bond’ from Nov 16, and according to Mr Zafar Shaikh, a target of Rs2.5 billion has been fixed against the sale of student prize bond.

The first prize will carry Rs700,000 while three prizes would carry Rs200,000 each in addition to other prizes.

He said that the organisation would launch mobile sale service for student prize bond in the federal capital.

The scheme will be replicated in other cities based on the results of the initiative in Islamabad, he added.

Mr Shaikh said that measures being taken by the National Savings Organisation should help increase saving-to-GDP ratio which is currently hovering around 13 per cent.

Our saving percentage should be 20 per cent like India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, where this rate is over 20 per cent.

The National Savings Organisation on Wednesday launched two initiatives to improve its functioning by applying information technology.

As part of security measures, a central monitoring system of CCTV camera became operational with central control at savings headquarters in Islamabad.

Initially, 25 saving centres which have been completely computerised will be part of the system which will be controlled from Islamabad. It introduced online cash book – data bank — for real time availability of reports of branches across the country.

This internal facility would help standardise reporting system across the country and would minimise duplication of entry reports in addition to preparation of MIS reporting on a daily basis across the country. Zafar Shaikh said that a PC-I had been submitted to the Planning Commission for full automation of the organisation.