PESHAWAR, Sept 27: Businessmen in the NWFP have asked commercial banks to reduce lending rates and to take steps to reduce problems faced by consumers in paying utility bills.

These demands were made in a meeting of the local credit advisory committee of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), held here the other day. Mohammad Humayun, chief manager of the SBP, presided over the meeting.

Sufi Bashir Ahmad Durrani, Ziaul Haq Sarhadi and Sharafat Ali Mubarik expressed concerns over high interest rates and lower returns on investment offered by commercial banks.

They said banks currently offered only Rs860 in profit on a deposit of Rs100,000, while charging between Rs2,500 and Rs3,000 on a loan of the same amount.

They argued that four years ago, the mark-up rate was between 3 to 6 per cent, but now it was between 12 and 22 per cent. They said that commercial banks were acquiring loans from the SBP on lower rates but lending it on unreasonably higher rates.