ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin has said that the House Building Finance Corporation (HBFC) has gone bankrupt and become redundant, adding that 26 per cent shares of the corporation will be privatized soon.

The finance minister said this while addressing the National Assembly’s standing committee on finance.

Tarin announced that the government would introduce Equity Investment Scheme (EIS) to bring improvement in the performance of HBFC. The company is employing far more people than it actually requires and therefore it is running into loss, he pointed out. The offer of voluntary retirement would be extended to the additional staff, he indicated.

Giving briefing to the committee HBFC Managing Director (MD) Azhar Jaffri said that 65,369 out of a total of 95,000 loan receivers of the corporation are defaulters.

HBFC authorities said that 25,000 loans amounting to Rs12 billion were disbursed during the period from 2005 to 2009.

The committee directed concerned quarters to take serious steps to extricate the corporation from loss, efforts should be made to reschedule default loans of Rs6 billion and recoveries be ensured.—Online