Senate passes ‘The State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill, 2022’ with majority vote
ISLAMABAD, Jan 28 (SABAH): The Senate was informed on Friday that the government is taking steps to make small airports of the country operational.
Speaking during Question Hour, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Ali Muhammad Khan said commercial traffic stands suspended at different airports due to non-availability of commercial airlines.
Ali Muhammad Khan assured that there will be no discrimination with any province regarding commencement of domestic flight operation. He said a decision will be made on the commercial viability of routes.
The House passed “The State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill, 2022” on Friday. The bill was laid by Finance Minister Shaukat Fayaz Ahmed Tarin.
However, after the session resumed, the finance minister presented the bill. The bill received 43 votes in favour and 43 votes against it. With Sanjrani voting in favour of the bill, the PTI government managed to clinch victory.
The bill is aimed at facilitating domestic economic stability, supporting sustainable growth and avoid repeated booms and busts that have characterized Pakistan’s past and led to painful consequences in terms of higher inflation, higher poverty and lower growth. It also balances the provision of necessary operational and financial autonomy to the State Bank with a new mechanism for enhancing transparency and strengthening accountability.
Earlier the session of the upper house was adjourned briefly as the government refused to table the bill over potential defeat due to the absence of treasury lawmakers.
The opposition protested the move and urged the Senate chairperson to ask the government to table the bill. “If the government is not willing to move the bill what can I do,” said Sanjrani in response to the opposition’s demand.
Senator Sherry Rehman said by deciding to delay the bill, the government has admitted its defeat. JUI-F Senator Abdul Ghafoor Haideri also said the government should “admit its defeat”.
After the bill’s passage, the opposition raised slogans against the government and tore up copies of the bill. They also demanded a recount of the vote, but the Senate chairperson prorogued the session.
Earlier, PPP Parliamentary Leader in Senate Senator Sherry Rehman via Twitter lashed out at the PTI-led government for stripping the country of its autonomy to make decisions by trying to bulldoze the State Bank of Pakistan (Amendment) Bill 2021. In a series of tweets, Rehman took exception to the issuance of the agenda for today’s meeting of the Senate.
The Senator said that issuing the agenda at such a juncture was “unprecedented for government’s standards of parliamentary manipulation”, which also was proof of the government’s “intimidation”.
“This is how the government is trying to bulldoze the SBP’s ‘autonomy’ bill, whereby it strips the country of its own ability to make sovereign decisions in times of national crises,” she wrote.
Rehman further stated that the government wants to imply to the IMF that the SBP bill was passed with parliamentary approval but actually, the entire Opposition is against it.
“While borrowing from the State Bank is not always prudent, often inflationary, the IMF’s condition that Pakistan’s central bank can’t raise money at all will impact our sovereign ability to mobilise funds in national emergencies, even war,” Rehman said, adding that this is unacceptable.
The Senator further stated that central banks are autonomous only to the extent they make monetary policy but it seems that PTI has borrowed so much in the last three and a half years of its rule that commercial banks will soon become the only lenders.
“What will happen to the SBP, lender of last resort when crisis looms? What will happen to the government’s ability to put down sovereign guarantees in big projects?” she asked.
Rehman said that the debt has been listed as contingent liabilities so that the IMF can overrule even them.
“Such terms are unheard of and rejected by the joint opposition,” she asserted.
“Did we hear the finance minister say the central bank should advise the commercial banks that the government may default on its domestic debt? What is going on here? The borrowing has gone through the roof, but this is quite unprecedented,” Sherry Rehman concluded.
The House also passed “The National Metrology Institute of Pakistan Bill, 2022” which was laid by Minister for Science and Technology Syed Shibli Faraz.
Meanwhile in a tweet, Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib termed the passage of State Bank of Pakistan Amendment Bill 2022 as another major victory of government in the Senate.
At the outset of the session, the House offered Fateha for the soldiers, who were martyred in a terrorist attack on a security forces’ check post in Balochistan’s Kech district. Senator Mushtaq Ahmad led the prayer. The House will now meet again on Monday at 3:30pm.