ISLAMABAD   -   Federal Minister for Communications and Postal Services Murad Saeed Sunday said the Pakistan Post was planning to launch Foreign Remittance Initiative (FRI) for overseas Pakistanis to offer them cost-free money transfer service. The minister, during a press briefing here at Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Postal Staff College, said the proposal had been sent to the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) for approval in the last month.

He said the initiative would enable Pakistani expatriates to send their hard-earned money to their loved ones at door step with the help of the Pak-Post.

He said the FRI was aimed at encouraging the overseas Pakistanis to remit their cash through legal means which would eventually lead to boost foreign exchange reserves of the country. “Around US 20 billion dollars are being remitted via Hawala-Hundi, annually”, Murad claimed, adding that the prime objective of FRI was to curb this menace.

Highlighting his ministry’s last six months performance, he said, the revolutionary measures had been taken to bring significant changes in the department in line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

The minister said the volume of mail and revenue had increased, adding that, only in Express Post the traffic had gone to 4.5 million mail items from 3.2 million during the last six months of current year as compared to same period of the last year. For Express mail, the revenue had increased to Rs 291 million from Rs.188 million for the same period, he added.

Murad said the Pakistan post had met the revenue target in nine months due to an overwhelming response of government and private sector which had switched to the national courier services for their courier needs. Recently the SBP had agreed to support digitization of more than 7,000 rural post offices to meet the goals of financial inclusion especially in rural areas, he maintained. The minister said E-Commerce initiative had booked more than 46,000 packets, earning around 3.5 million in two months’ time.

Pakistan Post was currently negotiating a strategic partnership with Daraz.Pk which would allow Daraz to use the Post’s infrastructure for first and last mile delivery of packets and parcels, he said. 614 franchise post offices, the minister said, had been activated on NADRA e-sahulat kiosks. The revolutionary launching of EMS plus was a great step and had proved as fast, reliable and affordable service.