Deposits with banking sector clock in at Rs8.4t

Register growth of 10.8% in 2014, according to SBP data.

KARACHI:

Deposits with Pakistan’s banking sector amounted to Rs8.4 trillion at the end of 2014 after growing at an annual rate of 10.8%.

According to the latest data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), annual growth in personal deposits outpaced the increase in overall deposits last year. Personal deposits increased 13.2% to Rs4.1 trillion in 2014 as opposed to 10.2% growth in the deposits of private businesses over the same 12-month period.

The last year’s increase in the deposit base is less than its five-year annualised growth rate, which clocked up at a little over 14% at the end of 2014.

The largest chunk within the category of personal deposits is of self-employed people. With over Rs2 trillion, their deposits constituted 48.2% of total personal deposits at the end of December.

Deposits belonging to salaried people amounted to Rs869.8 billion at the end of 2014, up 17.3% from a year ago.



In the major categories of private businesses, the manufacturing sector recorded a year-on-year growth rate of 27%, which is higher than that of agriculture-related businesses. The latter’s deposit base grew by just 0.4% in 2014.

There were a total of 37.8 million bank accounts in Pakistan at the end of the last fiscal year, according to another SBP publication. Their number stood at 28.7 million at the end of 2010-11, which shows an annualised increase of 9.6% in the last three years.

Personal deposits

Over 72% of all bank accounts in Pakistan belong to the category of personal accounts. According to their amount-wise break-up, the highest number of bank accounts existed in the average deposit bracket of Rs100,000-Rs200,000. As many as 4.9 million accounts, representing 18% of their overall number, had an average deposit ranging from Rs100,000 to Rs200,000.

The second highest number of accounts belonged to the category of Rs10,000-Rs20,000. The number of such bank accounts was 2.4 million at the end of June 2014. The smallest number of accounts (712,179) fell in the average deposit bracket of Rs300,000-400,000.

Bank accounts in the category of Rs100,000-Rs200,000 had the highest deposit base (Rs687.7 billion) within the personal account category at the end of the last fiscal year. The smallest deposit base (Rs3.8 billion) existed in personal accounts that had on average less than Rs5,000 at the end of 2013-14.

According to their region-wise break-down, about 48% of all personal accounts existed in Punjab in terms of the total value of deposits. Sindh-based accountholders had total personal deposits of Rs1.2 trillion, which represented 30.4% of the country’s overall deposit base.

Personal deposits of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa-based accountholders amounted to Rs299.8 billion, slightly higher than the value of personal deposits of Islamabad-based accountholders (Rs298.4 billion).

Interestingly, Islamabad-based accountholders had more deposits than the combined deposits of Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, AJK and FATA at the end of 2013-14.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 16^th, 2015.

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