KARACHI: Significant progress has been made between the May-September period to meet the action plan items set by Financial Action Task Force (FATF) in different areas to demonstrate effectiveness of Pakistan’s AML safety regime, said State Bank Governor Dr Reza Baqir on Monday.

After inaugurating the two-day Anti-Money Laundering (AML)/Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT) and Trade-Based Money Laundering (TBML) Conference on Monday, Baqir said that there was a major rethink of the approach being taken by the authorities and a number of steps were taken to make progress on these issues.

He, however, stressed the need of putting more effort to make progress on remaining areas to ensure that the country is out of grey list in the next FATF meeting.

He said the central bank has arranged many AML/CFT outreach and awareness programmes for its regulated entities and stakeholders. The conference is a useful platform to understand the AML/CFT challenges being faced globally and the best practices followed in mitigating such challenges, he added.

In the context of implementing AML/CFT requirements, the governor urged the financial sector to make efficient use of technologies for assessment of risks, controls and ongoing monitoring of financial transactions and enhance capacity by continuous training of their employees.

Dr Baqir emphasised that trade-based money laundering poses complex and sophisticated challenges and that SBP inspection teams conducted thematic inspections of banks with respect to export and import of specific goods.

He also referred to State Bank’s framework for managing risks of trade-based money laundering and terrorist financing which has been issued to encourage authorised dealers (banks) to effectively manage the trade based money laundering and terrorist financing risks.

The event was also addressed by ADB Country Director Xiohang Yang and Habib Metro Bank CEO Mohsin Ali Nathani.

Published in Dawn, October 29th, 2019