KARACHI: Roshan Digital Account (RDA) has proved to be a great success among the Pakistani community in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), an official said on Monday.
The Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Dr Reza Baqir expressed his gratitude to the Pakistani diaspora in the KSA for their tremendous support of the State Bank’s Roshan Digital Account (RDA) initiative.
The Pakistani community in KSA have opened the highest number of RDA accounts and sent the second highest amount of deposits among the 175 countries from which Overseas Pakistanis have participated in RDA.
He was speaking at an interactive session entitled ‘Roshan Digital Account, an initiative of State Bank of Pakistan’ organised by the Embassy of Pakistan in Riyadh on February 6, 2022.
The event was attended by a large number of Pakistanis residing in the Kingdom, various KSA based Pakistani associations, senior SBP management, and officials from the Embassy of Pakistan.
In his keynote address, Baqir expressed his gratitude to the Ambassador of Pakistan in KSA Lt. Gen Bilal Akbar (Rtd) for organising the event to discuss the RDA initiative.
He informed the audience that since the launch of the scheme last September, 345,570 RDAs have been opened by Overseas Pakistanis and $3.44 billion has been deposited into these accounts.
Baqir shared the key highlights of the country’s economy with the audience, highlighting three points that should give confidence to Overseas Pakistanis about Pakistan’s economic outlook including the successful containment of multiple waves of the Covid pandemic.
The preservation of Pakistan’s macroeconomic fundamentals through the Covid shock, including a reduction in the public debt to GDP ratio and a more than doubling of the country’s foreign exchange reserves and the proactive and coordinated policy response of the government and the SBP to provide support to the economy during Covid.
Terming Covid the biggest catastrophe for the world after World War II, Baqir noted that with its high population density and under-developed health care system, Pakistan could have been very badly affected by the pandemic.
He, however, lauded the professional approach adopted by the government, including the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), to rein in the multiple waves of the Covid pandemic with much lower loss of human life than in other countries.
He highlighted the critical role played by the Ehsaas cash transfer programme, which has been globally recognised for its unprecedented coverage of the vulnerable population.
Highlighting the role of the SBP in helping the economy manage the fall-out from this global catastrophe, he said that a number of historic measures were rolled out in record time, providing relief to households and companies during Covid equivalent to around 5 per cent of GDP.
As a result, Pakistan’s economy only shrank by 1 per cent in 2020, a much better outcome than in most of the rest of the world.
The Ambassador of Pakistan to KSA, Lt. Gen Bilal Akbar (Rtd) welcomed the Governor to Riyadh. He said that despite the challenges posed by the Covid pandemic, remittances from KSA to Pakistan and trade and economic relations between Pakistan and the Kingdom are witnessing an upward trajectory.
Earlier, Banking Policy and Regulation Group of the SBP Executive Director Arshad Mehmood Bhatti gave a detailed presentation on Roshan Digital Account and its allied products, including Naya Pakistan Certificates, Roshan Apni Car, and Roshan Samaaji Khidmat.
He highlighted the newest product made available through RDA, Roshan Apna Ghar which provides Overseas Pakistanis a very convenient means of buying property in Pakistan through bank financing or their own funds.
