The PayPal, a US-based financial services company and online money transfer system, is not coming to Pakistan owing to lack of legal backing as well as fear of money laundering incidents in the country. This was revealed in the meeting of Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecommunication, where IT Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui admitted that PayPal is not coming to Pakistan and they are in contact with other alternatives.
Secretary IT Marrof Afzal quoted internal issues behind the PayPal decision for not coming to Pakistan. He said that security and anti-money laundering related laws have been tightened and there is no legal issue in coming to Pakistan.
However, Senator Mohammad Ateeq Shaikh of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) opposed the ministry's claims while saying that the company is not coming to Pakistan due to lack of legal backing. He further said that PayPal is operating worldwide, and a Pakistani director who is working in the company wants to bring it to Pakistan.
However, fearing the entry of money laundering in the system in Pakistan, the company has refused to come to Pakistan. The claims of Sheikh were not opposed by the ministry despite the fact that the IT minister and secretary were present in the meeting.
He tabled a proposal, which was backed by the committee, that the government should provide a sovereign guarantee to PayPal and ask it for coming on public private partnership mode to remove its apprehensions.
The committee observed that due to lack of online money transfer system, the country is losing huge foreign exchange reserves, besides not letting the freelance sector to flourish.
The committee which met with Rubina Khalid in the chair here on Thursday expressed serious reservations over the new system adopted for mobile registration and recommended that it should be done away with.
New Device Identification Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) is meant for stopping smuggling and increasing revenue from the mobile imports; however no objectives have been achieved.
The committee witnessed an interesting scene when Senator Ateeq Shaikh said that a mobile was purchased in Islamabad in March, but was blocked after two months despite the assurance from the shopkeeper that all duties and taxes were paid and it was registered with the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA).
"However when inquired about the unblocking, we were told to pay Rs 35,000 as customs duties," said Shaikh. However, as the committee meeting progressed, Shaikh received a message that the mobile has been unblocked for Rs 3,000 with the assurance from the PTA that he would face no hardships in the mobile phone in future, which stunned all the participants including the IT minister. The minister also expressed serious concern over the process.
Rubina Khalid, who chaired the meeting, termed the digital security preparedness and cyber security dissatisfied and submitted some recommendations to the minister which were not shared with the committee and media.
Briefing the committee, the officials of the Universal Service Fund (USF) said that only 10 percent of the towers are connected through optic fibre in the country while the remaining ones are connected through microwaves. The committee recommended that local areas coming in the recently completed fibre optic under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) should be connected.
The USF officials said that 13,000 unserved mauzas covering 15 million population were targeted for voice and data services broadband coverage, of which 7,200 mauzas covering 10.4 million population have been covered so far. They are further targeting to reach out 30 million populations in next five years.
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