He said that Azhar Hameed, former local head of Standard Chartered Bank, has been appointed as Banking Ombudsman and would be taking charge in March. The organisation will have its offices in major cities.
Country's external debt is denominated in dollars. When the larger debts of Japan and others from Paris Club were re-evaluated in dollar terms against previous values in euro, there emerged large difference - as high as $1.5 billion. The Paris Cub loans ($12.5 billion) were rescheduled for 38 years in 2001.
This is the second big loss against the one unearthed two years ago of $2.8 billion.
During recent months the dollar has lost its worth against euro which narrowly has been protected by US Treasury, raising domestic interest rates allowing inflow of foreign funds helping support the dollar against a larger fall.
Dr Husain said that as the inflation would increase, the interest rates would follow. In case the interest rates are not increased the lower rates would put higher pressure on credit availability, resulting in higher inflation in return. Wheat and oil prices hikes have largely impacted the overall prices.
He said that global oil prices have gone up because of higher winter demands.
However, the interest rates for export finance schemes would not be increased while other rates would increase. This loss would be suffered by the State Bank.
Dr Husain was optimistic about the change in weather, which caused heavy rains and greater snowfall, going to reduce the water shortage for future crops.
He said that credit availability for small and medium enterprises would be on the basis of the risk in the business. Their collateral would be their cash flow statements. He said that better record holders in case of new loans would be given lower rates.
He said that expansion in industry is financed from the higher equity than the debts. Even the retained profit has been used for such expansion.
The SBP Governor said that policies for knitwear would be framed after seeing the yearly results of knitwear exports. Genuine exporters must be protected while fake exporters, wasting quotas in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, would not be safeguarded.
He said that the rate of poverty would reduce in the next 5-6 years in case the future growth rate is maintained at 7 percent. However, the rate of unemployment has been reduced from 8.5 percent to 7.6 percent in the recent survey.