ISLAMABAD: During a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT) and Telecommunications in Parliament House on Monday it was informed that the issue of paying $34 million to Google for payments made through direct carrier billing (DCB) has been resolved, and the government will devise a new payment mechanism to resolve the issue.
Senator Kauda Babar presided over the meeting.
During the meeting, officials from the Ministry of IT informed the committee that the State Bank of Pakistan and the Ministry of IT would be developing a new payment mechanism for global app manager Google.
The committee was informed that there were some difficulties in resolving the $34 million release to Google against DCB payments and that app payments had been shifted to debit and credit cards.
However, it prompted a response from telecom companies, followed by Google. Following that, the Federal Information Technology Ministry took note of the situation and raised it with the Finance Ministry.
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The payment was made after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s approval.
It has now been decided that the State Bank of Pakistan and the IT ministry will collaborate to develop a new payment mechanism within a month.
Concerns were also expressed during the meeting about the government s failure to open letters of credit (LCs) for the telecom sector, which is causing problems with the import of critical equipment for infrastructure upgrades.
Officials from the IT ministry have stated that chip manufacturing will begin in Pakistan soon.
Two licenses have been granted to infrastructure manufacturing companies.
