Sindh Bank refutes report

KARACHI: Sindh Bank Ltd, while referring to news item appeared in The News on 17.03.2015 that the tractor scheme is being run by “mafias” and growers are unable to get the tractors through legal process, vehemently refute the charges maligning Sindh Bank (being the only Bank in the country having established 225 branches, more than Rs5 billion profit and having a deposit base of Rs66 billion in less than four years), says a press release on Tuesday.
The facts of the matter are as under:
1. The scheme was announced through advertisement in the newspaper on 13.3.2015 exclusively meant for the growers in the province of Sindh on “First Come First Served Basis” as advised by the Ministry of Agriculture, government of Sindh to whom Sindh Bank is only a service provider for the last three years. 2. The allegation that the application forms were not available, our staff was ignorant about the tractor scheme and refused to provide application forms is also baseless. As a matter of fact, all 70 branches of Sindh Bank, located in 26 districts of rural Sindh, were handling this process and application forms were very much available in all the branches before releasing the advertisement in the press. 3. Referring to the suggestion made by some quarters of Hyderabad that Sindh government should give authority to some other bank instead of Sindh Bank to deal with the tractor scheme, it is clarified that we have handled this scheme for the last three years, i.e. since 2013 upto the entire satisfaction of the growers in Sindh except certain vested interests and dealers who used to book these tractors in big lots and then selling to the growers with certain premium. Sindh Bank has been assigned this scheme on yearly basis by the government of Sindh as the branch network of Sindh Bank in rural areas having 70 branches is fully equipped and competent to handle this scheme smoothly. 4. It is also incorrect that all the tractors were booked even before the announcement of the scheme on 13.03.2015 because more than 100 tractors were available on 14.03.2015 and 10 tractors even on 16.03.2015 before the closure of the scheme on 17.03.2015 when almost all the applications of required, quantity of 1600 had been received by the Bank through its branches in rural Sindh. Further this allegation is totally incorrect as in today’s capitalised world, everything can be verified through the automated system.
While denying and refuting such uncalled for charges of the vested interests, the Bank clarifies that in the past before assigning this duty to Sindh Bank, these dealers used to book the tractors on behalf of the growers in the bulk of 100 and more applications and sell them to farmers on much higher rates but during the last three years, nothing of this sort took place as all the tractors have gone to the genuine growers who applied for tractors by providing Form 7 as a proof of being grower along with a Bank Draft for an initial amount of Rs25000/-.