67 yrs since Partition, India still owes Pak Rs 5.6 bn

India still owes Pakistan around 5.6 billion rupees, claims a Pakistan’s central bank report.

A report in The Express Tribune, an English-language daily, revealed that the division of assets and liabilities of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) post-1947 remains incomplete to this day and that the amount continues to increase as Pakistan makes provision for inflation and other factors.

According to the quarterly report released by the State (Central) Bank of Pakistan (SBP), India still owes it a little over Rs5.6 billion — mainly on account of assets held with the RBI pending transfer to Pakistan.

From the first-ever Statement of Affairs that the SBP issued on its second day of existence — July 2, 1948 — to the latest one released on June 27, 2014, the central bank has listed the unsettled claims on the RBI among its “assets” unfailingly for the last 66 years. The SBP’s issue department — which deals with currency and the assets that underlie it — shows the outstanding claims on the RBI under two distinct categories, says the paper.

According to the agreement between leaderships of the two sides, RBI was to remain the central monetary authority for both India and Pakistan post-Partition, with Indian notes to stay on as legal tender in Pakistan until September 30, 1948. The paper quotes local historian FS Aijaz Husain as saying that the total assets that Pakistan was entitled to receive from the RBI amounted to Rs1.7 billion. However, the SBP received assets worth only Rs1.2 billion. The original, unsettled claims of Rs 490.8 million have now ballooned to over Rs5.6 billion after adjusting for inflation, exchange rate revisions.