ISLAMABAD: Within two years the recorded volume of incoming international calls has dropped from an astonishing two billion minutes to less than 500 million minutes per month, giving a massive boost to grey trafficking in the country in which illegal telephone exchanges are used.
According to a Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) official, over the past one and a half years the country witnessed 75 per cent increase in grey trafficking which he mainly attributed to setting up of the controversial International Clearing House (ICH) by the PPP-led overnment in October 2012.
Although the PTA official was non-committal about the precise amount of loss the national exchequer had suffered because of the ICH, Dr Ramesh Kumar Vankwani of the PML-N put the figure at over $1 billion per year.
Dr Vankwani had on Thursday moved in the National Assembly a notice drawing attention of Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman Khan to the matter.
“One can put the blame for putting in place the ICH on the PPP-led government, but we have been running the government for 10 months and unfortunately are not able to curb grey trafficking which continues to afflict the telecommunication sector.
The PTA official said that former IT secretary Farooq Awan came up with the idea of ICH and then implemented the highly contentious decision as chairman of the PTA.
Under the ICH, the entire incoming telephonic traffic was put at the disposal of the Pakistan Telecommunication Corporation Limited (PTCL). All the 14 long distance and international (LDI) licence-holding operators formed a consortium which through an agreement allowed the PTCL to manage the incoming telephone traffic and, in return, receive their proportionate share in the income.
According to Dr Vankwani, after the setting up of ICH in October 2012, the volume of recorded international incoming calls declined to less than one billion minutes per month within a few months.
The PTA official confirmed the figures of the PML-N lawmaker. The rate of incoming calls was increased by the previous PTA administration from 6.5 cents to 8.8 cents per minute, which also contributed to the swelling of grey traffic business which offered cheaper call rates to overseas Pakistanis.
