Mir Khan M. Jamali, expressed grave concerns about the country’s subpar telecom services as well as the difficulties the e-commerce sector and independent contractors are having.
The National Assembly Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication was informed on Friday that although Pakistan exports IT for more than $5 billion, only $2.5 billion of those exports are officially recorded.
Officials from the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication told the parliamentary panel about IT exports of Pakistan that unnecessary restrictions are discouraging exporters from using official banking channels and encouraging retention of exports earnings abroad.
Syed Junaid Imam, a member of the IT department, explained to the committee that PayPal and other companies are reluctant to operate in Pakistan because of the country’s various laws regarding bringing money into and sending money out of the country.
The parliamentary panel, which was presided over by Mir Khan Muhammad Jamali, expressed grave concerns about the country’s subpar telecom services as well as the difficulties the e-commerce sector and independent contractors are having. Even in the The legislators claim that the mobile services at Parliament Lodges are poor.
PTA officials claim that improvements have been made to the lodge services, but due to the structure of the building, there are still problems with mobile services. 75 mobile towers in Chitral would be upgraded, and 15 new towers would also be installed, according to Universal Service Fund (USF) CEO Haris Chaudhry. He claimed that several projects had been put on hold as a result of difficulties opening letters of credit (LCs).
The committee recommended the Finance Ministry and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) expedite the opening of LCs for the import of telecom equipment.
The Committee unanimously recommended moving forward with imports of telecom-related equipment to address signal and weak service issues. On the recommendation of security agencies due to the law and order situation in the areas, the committee directed to resume USF projects in some districts of Balochistan.
The Committee further ordered PTA to reopen its offices in Hyderabad and Karachi to assist Internet and mobile users in all surrounding regions.