‘Banking on Equality’ Policy: SBP praised for taking significant steps to promote women empowerment

ISLAMABAD: The Special Committee on Gender Mainstreaming acknowledged the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for taking significant steps to promote women empowerment through its “Banking on Equality” Policy, aiming to reduce the gender gap in financial inclusion.

However, the committee urged the SBP to ease account opening and loan provisions without collateral requirements from women.

The 7th meeting of the Special Committee on Gender Mainstreaming was held on Wednesday in Parliament House, Islamabad, under the chairpersonship of Dr Nafisa Shah, MNA.

While noting State Bank’s proactive approach towards financial inclusion of women, the committee stressed upon practical steps to ensure women inclusion in the formal economy. Women do not have access to capital and hence in the absence of collateral they are excluded from financial services.

They urged the State Bank to take comprehensive and practical steps for ensuring access to capital for women.

In addition, they stressed upon the government to give political support to the State Bank in its Banking on Equality Policy.

The deputy governor SBP said that banks have inducted over 13,116 women and improved the ratio of women staff in financial institutions workforce from 13 percent to 17 percent.

He further said that there has been an influx of 14.4 million women-owned active accounts. Women borrowers of microfinance banks have more than doubled from 912,000 to 2.6 million, he added.

He further informed the committee while briefing on gender disparities in financial inclusion that currently, 64 percent of the adult population in Pakistan has a formal bank account. In terms of gender divide, there are 47 per cent adult women have at-least one bank account as compared to 81 percent men. As a result, there is a gender gap of 34 per cent in financial inclusion. The SBP recently launched the NFIS 2024-28 which sets the target to further improve the level of financial inclusion to 75 per cent and reduce the gender gap to 25 per cent by 2028.

The committee recommended to the SBP for interventions to bolster women-led micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through concessional financing and capacity-building programmes for women.

The chairman Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) gave a comprehensive briefing on the steps taken by the SECP with a focus on the Prime Minister’s Women Empowerment Package 2024. He informed that SECP made it mandatory for all listed companies to disclose gender pay gap data in their annual reports. The committee was further informed that the SECP endeavouring to increase women representation in workforce from around 28 per cent to 40 per cent by June 2030. The committee was further informed that as part of its efforts to promote gender inclusion, the SECP now requires all medium and large-sized companies to appoint at least one female director to their boards which was appreciated by the committee and termed it a good step for women empowerment.

The meeting was attended by MNAs, Aqeel Malik, KhawajaIzharul Hassan, and Munaza Hassan. Senators Rubina Qaim Khani, Saadia Abbasi, Fawzia Arshad and Khalida Ateeb as well as officers of the concerned ministries/divisions also attended.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025