By Asad Cheema
ISLAMABAD: President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ICCI), Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan expressing grave concerns over the levy of 75 paisa tax on voice calls above 5 minutes duration in Budget 2021-22 saying it was an anti-poor tax and would increase the cost of 5 minutes call from current Rs.1.97 to Rs.2.72 putting more financial burden on the consumers besides affecting the business of telcos.
He was speaking during a meeting with delegation of the representatives of cellular service providers which visited ICCI on Monday and called on him. They strongly demanded that the government should immediately withdraw this tax to save the telcos and the consumers from further troubles.
Asif Aziz Chief Commercial Officer Jazz, Naveed Khalid Butt Group Chief Regulatory Officer Ufone, Bilal Khan Deputy Director Financial Control Zong, Bilal Maroof from Telenor and others were in the delegation. Fatma Azim Senior Vice President, Abdul Rehman Khan Vice President, Ejaz Abbasi former President ICCI were also present at the occasion.
The delegation members said that the tax has been imposed without consulting the stakeholders. They said the proposed tax is not implementable as the charging structure is not linear and is based on bundle offers to facilitate the prepaid users which account for 98% of overall cellular subscribers in Pakistan. They said that this regressive tax will play havoc with the prepaid bundles being enjoyed by the lowest segment of society.
The representatives of cellular service providers said that the voice and hybrid bundles will have to be withdrawn to implement this regressive tax and existing telecom service model will be seriously hampered. They said that such usage based taxes have not been implemented so far and it is nearly next to impossible to implement these changes in existing billing systems of telcos. Therefore, they stressed that the government should immediately withdraw the proposed tax to save the economy from its negative impact.
Addressing the delegation, Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan said that the incumbent government was determined to promote digital economy, but such anti-poor taxes would create hurdles in realizing such cherished goals. He said that the move is totally unprecedented regionally or globally, and will make the poor mobile users pay for the tax gaps. He said that the hardest hit will be the lowest segment of the society, who can’t afford to make WhatsApp calls.
