ISLAMABAD: The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP), the country’s largest public sector bank, would be restructured by the beginning of next year, with a major focus on strengthening of the regional offices of the bank through human and capital resource development in order to improve overall performance.
“The bank aims to strengthen all its regional offices by January 2018,” a top official of the bank said adding that the aim was to empower managers in various regions to make decisions and run the business in their respective regions independently.
The regional offices would be headed by Executive Vice President (EVPs) who would have full authority and responsibility of their region to run business affairs, the official added that the revamping exercise has already been initiated by the bank.
The strengthening of regional branches would help promote business and handle the grievances of the customers in a more effective way.
The officials also informed that work on establishing a branch of NBP in China was underway and many formalities have been completed while others would be accomplished soon.
Hopefully, the NBP China branch would be established in the first half of next calendar year to facilitate business and other transactions between the two countries and further boost trade and investment activities under China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
He said that the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC) had already accorded a formal approval to our initial application for setting up a branch while the process for seeking issuance of a preparatory license was in process and hopefully would be issued soon.
However, he said that NBP might face some internal issues in opening the branch in China following a decision by the Supreme Court in favour of the pensioners of the bank, which would cost the bank approximately Rs 47.7 billion.
