ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: The Supreme Court directed the Sindh High Court (SHC) on Thursday to conduct day-to-day hearing from Oct 30 for disposing of the cases instituted by the banks and the Pakistan Banking Association (PBA) on merit.

Banks and the PBA had been fined by the Competition Commission of Pakistan (CCP) for acting as a cartel.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar, Justice Ijaz-ul-Hassan and Justice Chaudhry Ejaz Yousaf took up an appeal of the CCP against the stay granted by the SHC restraining it from taking punitive action against seven banks and the PBA.

Counsel for the CCP, Malik Mohammad Qayyum, assured the court that the commission would not recover the fine from banks and association till their cases before the high court were decided, rendering the stay infructuous.

The controversy between the CCP and the PBA emerged when the commission issued show-cause notices to 42 banks and the association under the Competition Ordinance for floating a scheme called Enhanced Savings Account (ESA) and acting as a cartel.

The CCP had imposed a cumulative penalty of Rs250 million against the banks and the PBA for fixing the interest earned by the depositors on savings accounts through the ESA scheme.

The PBA, a group of different banks, includes Habib Bank, Allied Bank, United Bank, Saudi Pak Bank, Atlas Bank, National Bank, MCB Bank, ABN Amro Bank (Pakistan), NIB Bank and the HSBC of Pakistan.

The CCP is a government institution established to stimulate free competition in all spheres of commercial and economic activity by enhancing economic efficiency while protecting consumers from anti-competitive behaviour.

Instead of availing the statutory remedy of instituting appeal before the commission, the association challenged the order of imposing penalty before the SHC on May 27 that ordered it not to take any coercive action against PBA.

Consequently the commission preferred the appeal before the apex court against the stay order contending that the SHC being stationed in Karachi had no jurisdiction to entertain and grant interim relief to the association when the penalty was imposed in Islamabad.

By granting the relief, the appeal contended, the high court had acted against the well settled principle declared by the apex court in many cases.

Moreover the petition before the high court was not maintainable since the association has failed to avail the adequate remedy of filing the appeal before the appellate bench of the commission under Section 41 of the ordinance, the appeal stated.

Advocate Khalid Anwar and former attorney general Makhdoom Ali Khan represented the PBA and the banks.