Under the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Rozgar scheme during the novel coronavirus pandemic, it has been revealed that over 1.4 million employees have got their employment protected.

According to the details, to be exact the jobs of 1,427,097 employees have been saved so far due to the Rozgar scheme.

Soon after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the SBP took a number of steps to provide economic support to businesses and households.

As a part of these measures, the State Bank introduced a temporary refinance scheme for payment of wages and salaries to the workers and employees of the business concerns aims to finance wages and salaries of permanent, contractual, daily wagers as well as outsourced employees for three months (April 2020 to June 2020).

SBP Rozgar scheme provides concessional loans maximum at 3 percent per annum (p.a.) for end-users who are on active taxpayers’ list to businesses for wages and salaries expenses provided they commit not lay off their employees for the period of the loan.

Earlier in June the State Bank of Pakistan extended the rozgar scheme for another three months in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, and also widened its scope in collaboration with the government.

Under the scheme, as of 19 June, financing of Rs112.8 billion was approved by banks for 1,653 businesses, covering the wages and salaries of over 1.1 million employees.

Previously, the government had introduced a Risk Sharing Facility for SBP’s Rozgar Scheme to incentivize banks to provide loans to small and medium enterprises. Under this facility, the government bears a 40pc first loss on the disbursed portfolio (principal portion only) for eligible borrowers.