Former central bank chief Dr Ishrat Husain took commercial lenders to task on Wednesday for their laziness, which has resulted in vast gaps in banking services in agriculture, small and medium enterprises (SMEs), low-cost housing and personal finance segments.
In his keynote address at the fourth Digital Banking and Payments Summit organised by TerraBiz, Dr Husain said he was “not satisfied” with the progress that the banking sector has made since his time as governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) in the early 2000s.
“The size of the banking industry is small relative to the economy and its peers,” he said while noting that banks are overly focused on the corporate sector, high net worth individuals, trade financing and fee-based activities.
