THE exorbitant taxes imposed by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) on smartphones have made it impossible for a common man to buy them anymore. Duties on the latest models of mobile phones are higher than even their actual prices, which has no justification at all.

The authorities apparently are missing the basic flaw in their approach to the matter; a smartphone in today’s world is an item of everyday need. It is not a luxury item.

The imposition of duty and the rate at which it is being applied suggest the authorities are treating smartphones under the category of luxury items.

The imposition of such absurdly high duties is not only barring the locals from acquiring smartphones having the latest features based on fast and easy-to-use technology, but is also irritating the visitors from abroad who keep the usage of their smartphones limited to WhatsApp and such other things because using their phones as ‘phones’ means paying taxes when they do not plan to be here for long.

What we can all agree on without much debate, if at all, is that the imposition of duties is not going to help promote the locally manu-factured smartphones as they can never be an alternative to the cutting-edge technology available otherwise.

That being so, there is no point hindering people’s access to the latest multi-purpose smartphones by imposing high taxes, especially when they are useful to those interacting with digital skills and freelancing platforms. They represent a serious source of foreign exchange earnings and, therefore, deserve to be facilitated, not discouraged. Creating hurdles in the way of those bringing in foreign exchange is helping nobody; neither the individuals nor the country.

Yaseen Abban
Karachi

Published in Dawn, November 6th, 2022