Prices of mobile chargers and batteries have gone up after an increase of 15 cents in import duty on chargers and 32 cents on batteries, hurting small dealers some of whom have closed their shops. The Federal Board of Revenue increased import duty on these two mobile accessories following cases of heavy under-invoicing by importers in the purchase of...
The federal government from next budget would remove the general sales tax (GST) under Central Excise Mode (CEM) on banking, telecommunication, insurance etc, as the National Finance Commission (NFC) has defined the three sectors as services and not goods. Also, the federal government, with the consensus of all stakeholders of the 7th NFC Award, has...
PTA’s “Annual Report on Pakistan Telecom Industry” for 2008-09 is going to be available online in few days. Here we are providing its summary for our readers, in advance (Thanks to sources). We will do a series of itemized posts on all segments of Pakistan Telecom and Broadband Industry for year 2008-09. Here goes the summary…! Despite...
The Auditor General of Pakistan has detected irregularities, embezzlements, unauthorised expenditure, non-recoveries and losses, amounting to Rs 7.75 billion in various sections of telecommunication. The AGP, in its report on accounts of this sector for 2008-09, observed that the national exchequer suffered a total loss of Rs 7.247 billion in the NTC;...
After the imposition of 20 paisas tax on SMS, i have witnessed quite ferocious remarks about it. People in general, here on ProPakistani didn’t welcome it. Some of them are calling on to even contact Supreme Court about it; while some are saying that Telecom Companies should not accept it. But keeping the close eye, i don’t see that would...
Government of Pakistan, finance ministry to be exact, has communicated Telecom companies this Monday to increase SMS rates in order to get reduced taxes, told us high-ups at telecom companies – plus it was also reported by ‘The News’ yesterday. However, telecom companies are firm that they will not increase SMS rates, as text messages share significant...
The government has decided to disallow input tax adjustment facility to the telecommunication sector in the coming budget for 2009-10. Business recorder reported that rate of federal excise duty on telecom sector would be reduced from 21 to 16 percent. However, this reduction would be linked with abolition of input tax adjustment facility. The analysis...
Federal government will not reduce GST on telecom services as it has got no other way of easy collection of GST for revenue generation, reports ‘The News’ – however, reporter said that SIM activation tax may see a decrenebt by 40 per cent to Rs300 from Rs500. All stakeholders of the telecom industry had proposed to the government to...
We have discussed before, how the Government of Pakistan tried to recover their budget deficits from Telecom sector in 2008/09 budget. We had mentioned then that this is a clear misjudgment of the government to heavily rely on a single sector, and this could ultimately return results in negative manner. After almost a year now, this has been proved...
The Rs750 duty imposed on mobile phones under the category of luxurious items has in fact encouraged illegal imports affecting legal trade, which has fallen drastically said the Country General Manager of Nokia for Pakistan and Afghanistan Region, Imran Khalid Mahmood. Speaking to the media during a Nokia workshop, he said that as part of their budget...
Honourable Chairman, Pakistan Telecommunications Authority Issue: Charging 5% on Recharge by all Mobile Companies I would like to take this issue into your kind consideration that for the last few months, to be exact from August 2008, all mobile operators have been charging 5 % extra charges on recharging the balance. I would like to mention following...
These days the hotspot word about our economy is “recession”. Every one is talking about it and in such times consumers think twice while spending and consuming, as a result, companies have to respond accordingly. Two areas where the highest impact is expected are sales and the cost of incurred in generating sales, in other words even more media...
As it was anticipated long before, Mobile Phone and other telecom equipment imports declined notably in first half of current financial year. Reportedly, Mobile phone imports declined by 239 million dollars during July-December 2008 due to plenty of reasons, including imposition of taxes in budget(which was as high as Rs. 750 per handset), hiked inflation...
All cellular companies, except Ufone, have collectively asked the government to reduce taxes on telecom services. In a collective letter, mobile phone companies have mentioned the government to reconsider increased GST, taxes on handsets and removal of SIM activation tax. This was carried away after a significant decline in revenues and increased operational...
Here comes yet another tax for cellular users, this time we don’t need to worry about, as this tax is not for telecom services, instead the usage of telecom service will be taken as a measuring tool for someone’s income and those will be taxed whose monthly bill exceeds Rs. 100,000 per year or Rs. 8,333 per month. This decision was taken...
