SBP Offers Interest-free Loans to Women For Starting Business

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is offering interest-free loans to unemployed women to start their large-scale businesses to ensure economic stability and female participation in the workforce.

The announcement was made by the central bank's Dera Ismail Khan Deputy Chief Manager Fazal Muqeem while addressing participants of a seminar ‘Women bankability and banking on equality’ at the Government Polytechnic Institute for Women in Dera Ismail Khan on Sunday.

Muqeem claimed that women will be able to support their families by starting their own businesses. He said the current wave of inflation has impacted the entire society and social strata. The SBP official added that it gets difficult for the poor to manage their everyday expenses due to their income resources.

The employment opportunities are also limited in the country, therefore starting of own business is the only way to handle such a situation, he added. He informed that the prime minister introduced different policies with the support of the central bank to make unemployed women productive citizens.

Under these policies, the bank accounts of unemployed women were being opened along with men on an equal basis so that they could be provided with interest-free loans up to Rs0.5 million.

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