August 6, 2003	Wednesday	Jumadi-us-Sani 7, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: The government is considering to reduce or completely waive the line rent of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company, said Federal Minister for Information Technology and Telecommunication Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari here on Tuesday.

Talking to reporters here at his office, the minister however explained that any decision to this effect would have to be taken after carefully analyzing and considering a host of factors because it has far reaching economic and financial implications since the PTCL contributes Rs12 billion to the government exchequer through line rent alone. Besides such a decision would also adversely affect the profitability of the telephone company.

“It is the policy of the government to keep up the financial health of PTCL,” Mr Leghari observed but hastened to add that the government’s policy to encourage competitive environment through the deregulation of telecommunication would itself force PTCL to lower its profit margin and improve its services.

Approximately PTCL has five million subscribers in the country.

The minister said that his ministry had also asked the revenue division to reduce duties/taxes on the import of second hand computer monitors, on mobile phone activation charges and withholding tax on telephone calling cards.

“Both the finance division and the IT ministry are engaged in a discussion to remove 25 per cent duty on the import of second hand computer monitors, 10 per cent duty on telephone calling cards and Rs2,000 deducted as the mobile phone activation charges,” he observed.

To boost the software export, the government was also considering to initiate different projects worth Rs1.5 billion through e-governance. One such project was to provide online library comprising complete history of law cases through computers in all the bar councils of the country under a phased programme. In the first phase one-third of the bar rooms in the country would be linked through the electronic library, he said.

Our total software export was between $20 to 25 million — an amount which the local software companies could easily generate within the country by developing software for local purposes.

The minister said that the focus of the government would be to take advantage of the opportunities being offered through the IT enabled services. He informed that over three million jobs of call centres would be outsourced by the US alone within next seven to eight months and Pakistan would like to benefit by getting at least 100,000 jobs.

“We are endeavouring to realize the dream of making IT a backbone in the economic development of the country,” he observed adding that some US investors have recently visited him and had showed interest to open call centres in Pakistan.

Mr Leghari said that the government would soon announce a mobile phone policy as currently Pakistan has no such policy. The policy would also suggest how many new licenses should be awarded to new mobile phone operators because Pakistan has the availability of four more frequencies for the new operators.