fiscal management. pakistan is ranked among the top ten countries in the world in terms of receiving remittances. i have therefore no doubt in my mind that overseas pakistanis are the silent heroes of our nation as their hard earned income is a major contributor to our economy. however, there is still considerable movement of remittances through illegal / informal channels. the thrust of the gop and sbp policies is to divert this stream to the formal channel. page 2 of 10 4. in the last few years, government of pakistan and state bank of pakistan have taken a number of initiatives to promote the transfer of home remittances using formal financial channels and it is showing positive results. since the launch of pakistan remittance initiative ( pri ), there has been an upward trend of receiving remittances using formal financial channels that were previously sent through informal means of hawala and hundi. the government of pakistan have also announced another scheme to promote remittances using m - wallets where if the beneficiary choose to receive remittances in their mwallet, they will receive airtime worth of rs. 2 for every one usd equivalent remittance. further, gop and sbp have also introduced a performance based scheme for financial institutions in order to encourage them to make extraordinary efforts to achieve the higher targets of remittances. i am confident that such initiatives and products would increase remittances through formal channels and accelerate financial inclusion in the country. ladies and gentlemen! 5. despite all these efforts it remains a fact that we are still competing against very efficient and effective mode of remittance transfers such as hundi and hawala which because of their convenience and ease have remained a preferred choice of people especially who are less literate or live in far flung areas of the country. i think, one of the main reasons for this is that formal channels are based on centralized transaction processing, messaging and reconciliation systems, which inherently makes them slow. on top of it, if these transfer systems are paper based, they become even slower. this is where new technologies like the distributed ledger technology ( dlt ) comes to our aid. probably the biggest use case for these technologies is cross border page 3 of 10 remittance transactions, including not just remittances, but import, exports and other services as well. it is noteworthy that a number of banks and nonbank entities around the world have started experimenting with the block chain

branchless banking and payment system operators and service providers. right now, we are in the final stage of issuing regulations for e - money institutions. sbp is cognizant of the fact that fintechs may find certain regulations as inhibiting for their offering so we are in the process of establishing a regulatory sandbox to identify such issues and find ways of supporting and facilitating innovative ideas. ladies and gentlemen! 13. i am confident that the challenges that i have mentioned earlier will provide great opportunity and space to banks like telenor and companies like ant financials, who have great experience of transforming payments and banking landscape in china thus promoting digitization and financial inclusion. i am hopeful that based on its experience, ant financial will provide out of the box solutions for challenges being faced by the industry and consumers in pakistan. especially i expect that ant financials will bring innovative ideas to pakistan especially to assist sbp in areas like financial inclusion, digitization of payments, e - commerce, sme finance, increasing access points, partnerships with non - bank fintechs and using innovative technologies further to bring efficiency in banking and payments. 14. for my colleagues from banking industry in pakistan, i would like to say that we have to adapt to the changing realities of times. we shall take the challenge and use the opportunities provided by technology to deliver the best of best to our citizens. i expect that the financial sector will take advantage of page 9 of 10 current favorable market environment by investing in innovative technologies and product offerings to expand services and broaden access to financial services in the country. 15. i would once again like to congratulate telenor microfinance bank and ant financial for launching this initiative to facilitate cross border remittances. i am confident that ant financials will play its role in the economic development of pakistan and would further strengthen sino pak ties in the fields of banking, finance and payments. i shall ensure that state bank of pakistan would continue to extend possible support to facilitate them. thank you for your attention! pakistan zindabad. * * * * * page 10 of 10