LAHORE: A leading non-government organisation has decided to assess policies and impacts of commercial banks’ operations on consumers, society and the environment in a bid to promote responsible banking in Pakistan.

The decision was announced at a meeting of the NGO (Fair Finance Pakistan-FFP), a coalition of over 20 leading civil society organisations.

The assessment will be conducted in the wake of gapes found in a recent study of the network that found that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan has not yet introduced specific policies and measures to minimise environmental risks arising from the activities of investment banks.

At the meeting, Dr Abid Burki, a renowned economist and professor at LUMS, presented how five commercial banks in Pakistan – MCB, HBL, Meezan, Alfalah and NBP – have been sampled for the policy assessment. There are currently 29 banks in Pakistan – five in public, 20 in private and four in foreign sectors.

“The samples include small, medium and large banks both from public and private sector including an Islamic bank. Policies will be assessed across different major themes on climate change, gender equality, human rights, financial inclusion, and transparency and accountability,” he said.

Swedish Consumer Association Representative Jakob Konig shared how the civil society has been able to create an impact on the banking policies and brought about a huge change. “Banks in Sweden have been assessed since 2014 and many reports were published assessing them whether they finance fossil fuel companies or governments linked with human rights violations, war crimes in Sudan and military in Myanmar.

FFP Programme Head Asim Jaffry shared that only 20pc Pakistanis had a formal bank account with 5pc of them women in the financial sector.

Published in Dawn, October 26th, 2021