Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called for the rapid implementation of a national transaction system and said it was essential to ensure transparency and modernize the economy of Pakistan.
Thursday, presiding over a weekly meeting on the development of an economy without cash and digital at the Prime Minister’s office, Shehbaz stressed the need to facilitate digital payments between citizens and businesses, and to promote public awareness of digital platforms.
“The digital system is essential to improve transparency and must be implemented throughout the country,” he said.
He directed the three newly trained committees, the innovation and adoption committee of digital payments, the digital public infrastructure committee and the government payment committee to collaborate closely with stakeholders and submit exploitable recommendations.
The digital system is vital to improve transparency and must be implemented throughout the country
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif
The Prime Minister has been informed that the State Bank of Pakistan is preparing a simplified digital payment strategy to integrate more traders and extend mobile adoption.
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The objectives include the increase in mobile applications users from 95 million to 120 m and the number of merchants using QR codes from 0.9 m to 2 m. The total volume of digital payments should go from 7.5 billion rupees to RS12B.
Shehbaz said these targets should be doubled to speed up progress.
The officials informed the meeting that the “Digital National Pakistan” initiative was underway and that the Islamabad City mobile application has already recorded 1.3 million downloads. Thanks to the application, RS15.5B was collected within the framework of the ACCISE and TIC taxation service.
The government also advances the Identification Project for Digital Pakistan and online assigned services will soon be launched in Islamabad.
Plans are in place to extend free Wi-Fi services to Islamabad in hospitals, schools, offices, parks and metro stations.
Shehbaz ordered these digital services to be extended to federal areas, Azad Jammu and Cashmire and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The meeting was followed by the Minister of Computer Science and Telecommunications Shaza Fatima, the Minister of Petroleum Ali Perviz Malik, the advisor Dr Tauqir Shah and the Minister of State for Finance and the railways Bilal Azhar Kayani, as well as other senior officials.
