ISLAMABAD, Nov 9: The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) has approved the enhancement of ‘NBP Advance Salary’ loan limit from Rs490,000 to Rs1,000,000.

“Government officials are eligible to apply for enhanced loans under the ‘NBP Advance Salary’ financing product,” Syed Ibne Hassan, a senior NBP official, told APP.

He said that senior government officials with higher salary brackets (Grade 17 and above) would be eligible to this enhanced scheme.

Highlighting the background of the product, he said that ‘NBP Advance Salary’ is the single largest consumer product in Pakistan.

He said that the product was launched in 2002 with an objective to uplift the previously ignored and under-banked community of government employees and armed forces personnel by providing them an opportunity of greater self-reliance and generate easily accessible funds for personal use.

“The product has performed really well and is one of the major contributors to bank’s profits. So far more than Rs190bn have been disbursed to more than 1.4 million borrowers,” he said.

“At the moment, most of NBP Advance Salary customers are within a salary bracket of Rs15,000 and lower,” he said.  The advance salary loan has the lowest mark-up rates and is available in  NBP’s 1,283 branches.—APP