ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) on Monday urged the government to withdraw taxes imposed on voice calls.

A delegation of representatives from cellular service provider companies visited the chamber premises and met ICCI President Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan.

They expressed concerns over the 75 paisa tax levy on voice calls that exceed the five minute duration in budget 2021-22. This will increase the cost of a five minute call from Rs1.9 to Rs2.7 along with increasing the financial burden on consumers besides affecting the business of telcos, they said. The representatives urged the government to withdraw this tax to spare telcos and consumers from increasing cost of calls.

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 part of the delegation. Fatma Azim, ICCI senior vice president, vice president Abdul Rehman Khan and former president Ejaz Abbasi were also present.

Delegation members said that the tax was imposed without consulting stakeholders, adding, the proposed tax is not implementable as charging structure is not linear and is based on bundle offers to facilitate prepaid users who account for 98pc of overall cellular subscribers in Pakistan.

They said this tax will negatively affect prepaid bundles being enjoyed by the lowest segment of society. Voice and hybrid bundles will have to be withdrawn to implement this tax and existing telecom service model will be hampered, they said, adding such usage based taxes have not been implemented so far and it is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.

Addressing the delegation, Mr Khan said that the current government was determined to promote digital economy, but such taxes would create hurdles in realising cherished goals. He said the hardest hit will be the lowest segment of society, who cannot make WhatsApp calls.

He said currently, close to 85 million Pakistanis are using 2G-enabled feature phones and have no access to the internet.

Users will quickly learn to redial before 5 minutes to avoid the charge of proposed levy hence it may bring nothing to the government but add to complexity for the telecom sector and operators besides causing massive inconvenience to telecom users.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2021