BREAKING: Development in Telecom Sector Not Reflected in Tax Revenues?

Development in Telecom Sector Not Reflected in Tax Revenues
Tazeen Hasan (Editorial Media Bites) analyses the latest Pakistan Telecommunication Authority Report for the financial year 2015-16 and raises some interesting questions. 

While Chaudhry Nisar is promising the nation 5G infrastructure to transform Pakistan into a smart nation, tax returns from the telecom sector have significantly declined since 2014 according to the recent annual report by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority, PTA.  

In 2015-16, the telecom sector contributed PKR 157.8 billion tax payments as compared to PKR 243.8 billion in 2013-14. The GST paid by telephone operators has also sharply declined from PKR 60.1 billion in 2014 to PKR 41.65 billion in 2016. 

The total revenue in the financial year 2015-16 has reached PKR 428.8 billion but it is still lower than 2013-14 when it was recorded PKR 463.5 billion.
There is a serious discrepancy in the report as on page 18 it shows that the total number of cellular mobile subscribers have declined since 2014 from PKR 139.9 million to PKR 133.24 million. Are these figures acceptable for any sane person in the country? Similarly, the total penetration which was  76.5 percent in 2013-14 is shown to be reduced to 69.1 percent in the graph mentioned on the same  page of the report. Let's just hope that PTA  will  able to explain this apparent inconsistency. 

The mobile broadband penetration has subsequently increased from 2.8 percent to 15.32 percent which is a breakthrough and should be appreciated. The number of mobile broadband subscribers has increased from 3.8 million to 29.53 million consumers. The revenue from 3G, 4G, and LTE network traffic has  also sharply increased from 53 billion PKR to PKR 98 billion (as mentioned in 'Data Revenue Cellular Mobile Network' infographics). 

There are some other interesting but unbelievable figures, for instance, the 'Complaints Received and Resolved' which shows that Complaints received are  resolved 100 percent of the times.n Pakistanis would certainly like to move to a country where such top-notch services are provided.
According to the figures mentioned through infographics, 2.5 million users per day use Facebook, which is by far the most used digital platform in Pakistan. The next most popular digital giant is Youtube, being visited by approximately 0.5 million users per day. Whatsapp, arriving at third place in this race of cyber platform popularity,  is used by 0.45 million users per day. Interestingly, despite a lengthy ban on YouTube in the country, the Daily Motion usage still lags far behind and is visited only by 0.08 million users per day. Facebook video has been shown as a separate statistics indicating 0.44 million users per day (almost as trendy as WhatsApp).

There are some other certain positive indications towards smart Pakistan for instance, flourishing mobile banking and e-commerce. The report reveals PKR 1,492 billion were transferred through mobile banking in the year 2015-16 which is a significant amount. It also indicates rising trends in online education and ICT tools like virtual classrooms. No doubt, in the last two decades, the wholetelecom infrastructure has been completely transformed into a state of art network. Yet, is it justified for the current government to take the credit? As a matter of fact, it all started in early 90's and it is a trickle down effect of the international development in the technological arena that pushed these transformations.

Having such significant developments and achievements mentioned in the report, an obvious question worth asking here would be: why are the tax returns declining instead of rising?  

Mediabites Editorial -Tazeen Hasan
Published on Octobar 11, 2016