KARACHI, March 27: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has asked all banks/DFIs to surrender all deposits that have not been operated upon during the last ten years, excluding those in the name of a minor, a government entity or a court of law, as stipulated under Subsection (1) of Section 31 of BCO, 1962.

In a CPD Circular Letter No 2 of 2012, dated March 22, 2012, SBP reminded the banks/DFIs that in terms of Section 31 of the Banking Companies Ordinance, 1962, the banks are required to surrender to SBP.

The amount of unclaimed deposits/instruments in Pak Rupee (PKR) and in Foreign Currencies (FCY) are required to be surrendered during the first week of April of each calendar year along-with a list of unclaimed deposits/instruments.

In order to streamline the process of acquisition of unclaimed deposits data, it has been decided to obtain unclaimed data in database format (DBF) through Data Acquisition Portal 4 (DAP4), primary gateway for data acquisition for SBP.

The Circular said that to facilitate Banks/DFIs in smooth transmission of requisite data for the year 2011, a comprehensive training session was arranged on March 7, 2012. Keeping in view the constraints faced by Banks/DFIs in conversion of MS Excel data in DBF format, a DBF Generator along with DAP4 Users Manual and User Guide for preparing the data files has also been issued.

Banks/DFIs are therefore, advised to ensure submission of unclaimed deposits data in DBF format through DAP4 by April 7, 2012 or by next working day, if the due date happened to be a holiday, each year.

Further, Banks/DFIs may deposit cheques/debit advises of equal amount of unclaimed deposits on the next working day, if the data is being submitted on last due date.—APP