SBP digitalises process for export finance scheme

KARACHI: The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) has digitalised the process for obtaining refinance by banks under the Export Finance Scheme (EFS), a statement said.

The SBP on Wednesday said it had digitalised the process of obtaining refinance by the banks under the Export Finance Scheme (EFS) for both conventional and Shariah-compliant versions.

Digitalisation of the refinance process is envisioned to effectively use technology for enhancing operational efficiency.

Now the EFS-related cases and other relevant data will be submitted electronically to the State Bank by banks through an online platform for expeditious regulatory decisions.

Initially, the digitalised process of EFS cases will run in parallel with the existing manual submission for a short period. Thereafter, the paper-based submission of cases by the banks will permanently be transferred to the electronic submission.

This online platform will also enable the banks to track the updated status of the EFS-related cases submitted to the SBP/SBP BSC, on a real-time basis. The banks will be able to retrieve the system‐generated reports for updated status for onward sharing with their customers.

The implementation of the digitalisation of EFS functions will enable the central bank to delegate some of the operations to the banks, such as sub-allocation of EFS limits by the banks as per their own requirements.

Under the digitalised mechanism, there will be no need of transferring an exporter’s limit from one SBP BSC office to another. This will ensure swift processing of the EFS cases and benefit the banks/exporters availing financing facility under EFS.

The digitalisation of EFS functions is expected to conserve resources and bring efficiency by reducing turnaround time and replacing the paper-based submissions of cases that are prone to logistic and storage issues.

This initiative is a part of the SBP’s Vision 2020, aiming at implementing a modern framework for the retention and sharing of information and bringing ease of doing business.

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