Islamabad:
An audit report presented to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has revealed that Zarai Taraqiati Bank Limited (ZTBL) employed a loss of RS1.2 billion to the national treasury through a fraud involved inadvanted forged documents.
Auditing officials on Tuesday told a PAC meeting – held under the presidency of Junaid Akbar on Tuesday – that in several cases, loans that were sanctioned for farmers never reached them when ZTBL employees abused these loans.
By acting for the committee, the ZTBL president declared that the bank dismissed 400 employees who were found involved in changing loan documents. “We have placed personal contact numbers and attention boards in each branch. We have so far recovered RS270 million and the recovery effort is underway,” he said.
The committee asked the president to tackle the question in coordination with the audit department.
It was also revealed that ZTBL had failed to recover RS9 billion in loans with 1,601 borrowers who did not even return a single rupie.
Auditing officials said that only 16% of the recoverable amounts were collected from borrowers in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore. They also noticed an increasing number of loans that have been defaulted across the country.
MNA Khawaja Sheraz asked why ZTBL is constantly sinking when the banking sector is profitable.
ZTBL is a state -owned agricultural development bank that provides agricultural credit and banking services to farmers across the country. It is still the largest financial institution for the public sector in the country in the country.
PAC also took the Suo Motu warning on Jamshed Dasti’s request for a loss of 1.1 million liters of gasoline at Pakistan State Oil (PSO) due to employee defense.
PSO CEO (MD) told the committee that the estimated value of the lost gasoline is RS180 million. “We recovered RS40 million from the responsible employees after dismissing them,” he said.
