ISLAMABAD

State Minister for IT and Telecom Anusha Rehman on Tuesday said that heavy taxes on telecom sector were adversely effecting growth of the industry but her ministry was doing the needful to resolve the issue.
She said that the office is communicating with FBR and with provinces also to come up with some feasible solution.
Government needs taxes but there must be a balance, Secretary Ministry of IT is communicating with Secretary Federal Board of Revenue while Punjab government has already constituted a committee to rationalise the taxes on telecom and internet, PML-N lawmaker said while talking to the media after attending GSMA Asia and cellular mobile operators of Pakistan conference.
She said new telecom policy draft is with ECC for final approval, which will, according to her, revolutionise the industry. She hoped that by mid 2016 the new policy will be implemented.
Rehman said that new policy would be footprint which will give vision and directions to the industry and will enable government to solve regulatory issues.
If there is some spectrum which is not used from many years, after the new policy that spectrum could be re-auctioned if the respective company is not interested in utilising it, Minister said.
Earlier, PTA chairman Ismail Shah while addressing the meeting titled Digital Societies making Commerce smarter said that after the auction of spectrum, last year, the mobile band subscribers in the country has increased to 20.1 million, while total subscribers including fixed line has crossed 23.5 million. He said the 31 percent of total mobile handsets has been replaced by smartphones, and by 2018, the Smart phones will take 55 percent of total market share.
He said due to this tremendous growth Pakistan is now among top ten smart phone markets of the world.
He admitted that due to bio metric verification of Sims the number of subscribers reduced subsequently however, it is again increasing.
He said by end September the consumer database was slashed to 121 million, almost half of before the verification,
Which resulted in loss of revenue to government and operators but the exercise was helpful in restoring law and order in the country.
We have reports that due to bio-metric verification of Sims the ransom cases in Karachi were reduced, there were other reasons also, but verification also helped, Shah claimed.
The representatives from GSMA and mobile operators discussed the latest trends and shared experiences and challenges of digitising the local economy.
The stakeholders stressed the need to tailor the policies according to the dynamics of local market and suggested that all the stakeholders must be taken aboard while drafting legislations and policy framework.