KARACHI, Feb 25: The Employees Old Age Benefit Institution has so far made an investment of Rs12 billion in real estate, stock market and other schemes and has been able to get targeted 17 per cent profit last year.
This was stated by EOBI Chairman Brig (rtd) Akhtar Zamin while speaking at a radio press conference. He said the EOBI, being a government organisation, used to invest in national saving schemes only but in view of their declining margin of profit, he had sent a proposal to the government seeking investment in real estate and stock market.
For this purpose, Brig Zamin said the EOBI had set up the Pakistan Real Estate Management Company as a subsidiary of the institution, which had been registered with the SECP with Rs100 million capital. He said Rs7 billion had been invested in real estate so far.
He said it had been decided that EOBI would not make any purchase in the private sector to maintain transparency in deals but bid for lands offered for sale by government organisations like Railway and Defence.
Since he took over, he said, the EOBI had made investment at five to six places including a 13,000sq-yard plot in Lahore and purchase of plots from the CDA and Defence.
He said the EOBI would go for value addition at some places to derive real benefits. It was working on construction of four and five star hotels in Lahore whose ground-breaking would take place on March 23. However, he made it clear that the EOBI would not operate the hotels but would have their management through private sector.
Brig Akhtar Zamin said the National Accountability Bureau had been informed about the EOBI’s plans and deals made so far.
At present, he said, the EOBI had made no investment in real estate in Karachi because there was no offer of sale of plot or land here. “However, we are eyeing on railway and defence lands and would bid for land near Capri Cinema,” he said.
He said after the UBL showed inability to carry on the EOBI’s pension transactions, the EOBI entered into an agreement with the National Bank of Pakistan which had started dealing with the pension payments of retired employees.
Brig Akhtar Zamin acknowledged that pensioners registered with the EOBI did face problems because of change of two banks, first HBL and then UBL, in one year but now this problem had been overcome.
When asked about the location of EOBI offices shifted from its own premises at Nursery to a rental building at I.I. Chundrigar Road, Akhtar Zamin said it was an administrative requirement. He said Nursery office building was in a bazaar and the institution had been unable to derive optimum results from there because of space shortage and parking problems.
Moreover, he said, the institution hired present premises on rent from the government and not from any private organisation.
He said in the next three to four years the EOBI would have its own prestigious office while old office at Nursery would be demolished and replaced with a ground plus five storey commercial plaza.
He said the EOBI suffered no losses in the stocks because it had invested in blue chips only.
He said there could be organisations which did not get themselves registered with the EOBI. But these are brought into EOBI’s net suo motu when detected by field staff of regional offices. He said at present EOBI had 34,000 to 35,000 active employers having a workforce of 1.6 million registered with the EOBI.
Brig Akhtar Zamin said he had activated EOBI’s monitoring and evaluation department to detect evasive units and organisations. He said action was taken to weed out corrupt practices and so far a number of lower and senior staff had been dismissed from service on this count.—APP