No savings?

It is incomprehensible that National Savings which is a non-profit non-commercial institution under the Ministry of Finance established solely for the protection and welfare of people like pensioners, senior citizens, widows etc, has been consistently diminishing profit rates on all its investment schemes since the last quarter of 2019 in this era of sky-rocketing inflation. So much so that the rate of return on the best schemes of National Savings has come down to 12.24 percent which is a whole percentage point below the SBP’s current mark-up rate of 13.25 percent. This is most perplexing because previously the profit rates of National Savings used to be almost 1-2 percent higher than the prevailing SBP mark-up rate.

Is there any competent authority in the government which can explain this phenomenon, and who is behind manipulating the profit rates of National Savings to the detriment of poor sections of society who have no other means of survival against the prevailing tsunami of inflation? Or maybe as another major step towards the creation of a welfare state, this organization has also been handed over by the PTI to the IMF like Ministry of Finance, SBP, FBR etc?

Fuad Enver

Islamabad