Message from Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs, Statistics, Planning and Development

The establishment of the Bank of Sindh is another milestone in the banking history of Pakistan. The government of Sindh has taken the right step in establishing the much needed bank for providing the banking services to the people of the province.
In this context, not only the province of Sindh has been brought at par with the other provinces, but it will also pay a leading role in extending credit facilities to the deserving clients of the province which will further enhance developmental activities in the industrial and agricultural sectors of the province.
The Pakistani banking system has, over the last decade, gradually evolved from a weak state-owned system to slightly healthier and active private sector driven system. The private sector controls nearly 80 percent of the system assets, as opposed to the early 1990s when 90 percent of the system assets were controlled by the government. The financial performance of the banking system of Pakistan remained outstanding.
This has placed Pakistan among the top half in a group of 44 emerging economies in terms of capital adequacy and asset quality while, in terms of profits, Pakistani banking system has been ranked among the top ten.
The banking system continued to invite the foreign investors interest in Pakistan and attract significant share of direct foreign investment. On the back of excellent result, banks maintained their dominance in the capital markets as their market capitalization has surged to one third of the total capitalization of Karachi Stock Exchange.
While the banking system has been performing well for quite a few years and has been reaping the benefits of increased financial soundness, improved resilience, enhanced competition, increased efficiencies, growing penetration and hence widening the outreach, it has, nevertheless, become imperative that it can sustain these gains and also build on. This calls for the need of a focused approach on a number of fronts. Financial soundness should be fortified by converging on the effective risk management, improved corporate governance standards, and focusing on the quality of assets and the earnings.