ISLAMABAD ( MEDIA REPORT )
A Senate committee on Thursday objected to investment of Rs1.7 billion National Telecommunications Corporation funds in private banks.
Members of the committee had reasons to believe that NTC had made the investment in private banks without approval of Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications in this case. They argued that some private banks were owned by foreign companies from other countries.
“Why did NTC, a government-based telecom service, invest such a huge amount with private banks, especially when we all know that foreign banks take their profits out of Pakistan?” said PPP Senator Rehman Malik.
Other members shared the concerns that investing huge sums with foreign banks benefited Pakistan little as they took 20pc plus profits to their home countries and recommended that all companies should invest in local banks.
However, Joint Secretary, MoIT, Syed Khalid Gardezi, explained to the members of the committee that the funds were invested following legal procedures.
The committee members were informed that all banks, including foreign banks operated under the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP). The ministry of finance had also permitted public companies to invest with both government-owned, such as the National Bank of Pakistan, and privately-owned foreign banks.
“NTC never invests all its funds in one bank for security reasons. NTC invested with the private bank that offered the best interest rates. In this, a bank was offering the highest rate at 10.65pc, one of the best in the market,” said Syed Khalid Gardezi.
Khalid Gardezi who also heads the audit committee, Ministry of IT, said that NTC also preferred to do business with banks that were rated the best by the State Bank.
However, that chairman of the committee, Awami National Party (ANP), Senator Shahi Syed, and Senator Rehman Malik were not convinced by the arguments presented by the government official.
Both the members demanded the minutes of their past audit meetings to study and decide if the NTC had made the right choices of investing the Rs1.7bn in private banks.
Senator Shahi Syed also took up the matter of the controversial Prevention of Cyber Crime Bill, 2015, that has been pending since last year.
According to the IT industry and the civil society, the bill curbed human liberties and gave excessive policing powers to investigating authorities, particularly the Federal Investigation Authority (FIA).
Hastily approved by the National Assembly standing committee on IT, the bill was challenged in the parliament and sent to the Senate to address the concerns in the bill.
“The bill is too problematic. We must address whatever concerns have been raised in the bill and try to remove them,” said Shahi Syed who announced to discuss the bill when the committee meets next week.
PPP senator Karim Ahmed Khwaja urged the chairman to compare his copy of the cyber crime bill with the draft prepared by the Ministry of Information Technology.
Karim Khawaja has been pushing to get his points incorporated into the bill prepared by the ministry.
However, the ministry is reluctant to do so saying that it would create duplications. Karim Khawaja had threatened to block the passage of the draft bill in the Senate, if his copy of the cyber crime law were not considered by the ministry.
The senate committee has a deadline till Aug 16 to decide the fate of the bill.
Published in Dawn, July 15th, 2016