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Deposits with Pakistan’s banking sector amounted to Rs8.5 trillion at the end of the first quarter of 2015, which is 13.5% higher than the outstanding position of deposits in March 2014.
According to provisional data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Tuesday, annual growth in personal deposits outpaced the increase in overall deposits in the 12-month period ending on March 31. Personal deposits increased 16.6% to Rs4.3 trillion in the period under review as opposed to 8.7% growth in the deposits of private businesses over the same 12-month period.
The annualised growth rate in the deposit base has been a little over 14% in 2010-14.
The largest chunk within the category of personal deposits is of self-employed people. With over Rs2.1 trillion, their deposits constituted 49.2% of total personal deposits at the end of March.
Deposits belonging to salaried people amounted to Rs898.5 billion at the end of March, up 16.2% from a year ago.
In the major categories of private businesses, the manufacturing sector recorded a year-on-year growth rate of 23.2%, which is higher than that of agriculture-related businesses. The latter’s deposit base grew by 5.9% to Rs228.9 billion during the period under review.
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% over the three-year period.
More than 72.2% of all bank accounts in Pakistan belong to the category of personal accounts. According to their amount-wise breakdown, 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.
According to their region-wise breakdown, 48.1% 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).
Islamabad-based accountholders had more deposits than the combined deposits of Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, AJK and FATA at the end of the last fiscal year.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 15th, 2015.
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