Senate Panel Pushes For Lower Mobile Phone Taxes To Support 5G Rollout

Pakistan’s Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat has called for lower mobile phone taxes and a complete exemption on tablets, arguing that current tax rates risk slowing down the country’s 5G rollout before it even properly begins.

The committee, chaired by Senator Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan, took up the issue during a session that also covered Islamabad Club governance, foreign citizenship disclosure rules for civil servants, and proposed restrictions on government employees’ social media use. But it was the tax and 5G discussion that carried the most direct relevance for consumers and the telecom sector.

Senators Push For Tax Relief On Devices

Senators Mohammad Abdul Qadir and Saadia Abbasi both called for reduced taxation on digital devices, pointing to the cost burden high taxes place on citizens and businesses. Chairman Rana Mahmood-ul-Hassan went further, calling for a complete tax exemption on tablets and lower taxes specifically on mobile phones, warning that excessive taxation could hold back 5G adoption once the technology is available.

Senator Dilawar Khan made a related but distinct argument, suggesting that wider access to affordable phones would actually help increase government revenue over time, rather than reduce it. The logic here is straightforward: more affordable devices mean more people buying phones through formal, taxed channels, which can offset lower per-unit tax rates through higher overall sales volume.

None of the senators quoted in the session offered specific figures for what a reduced tax rate should look like, so the discussion remains a policy direction rather than a proposal with numbers attached.

PTA Data Shows A Gap Between Local Manufacturing And 5G Readiness

The PTA chairman’s briefing to the committee laid out where Pakistan’s local mobile manufacturing sector actually stands, and it’s a mixed picture. Locally manufactured mobile phones generally don’t support 5G yet, according to the PTA chairman, even as local manufacturers are being encouraged to start assembling 5G-enabled devices in the country.

That’s a meaningful gap given the committee’s own stated concern about 5G rollout. Lower taxes on devices only address one side of adoption, affordability. The other side is whether the devices actually being sold and assembled locally can run on 5G networks once they’re available, and right now the answer for most locally made phones is no.

Thirty-seven companies are currently assembling mobile phones inside Pakistan, the PTA chairman said, and they face different tax treatment compared to imported devices. Of phones sold in the country, 92% carry no tax at all, while the remaining 8% are subject to taxation, a split that suggests the bulk of the market is already operating in a low-tax bracket, even before the committee’s proposed changes.

Local Manufacturing Has Scaled Up Significantly

The scale of local assembly is substantial. The PTA chairman told the committee that 31 million mobile phones have been manufactured in Pakistan, and the PTA’s Member (Policy) said locally manufactured phones now account for 95% of the phones in use across the country.

That figure represents a major shift in how Pakistanis access mobile devices compared to a decade ago, when imported phones dominated the market. It also means that whatever gap exists between local manufacturing and 5G capability isn’t a niche problem; it affects the vast majority of phones currently in Pakistani hands.

What This Means For 5G Rollout Timing

The committee’s tax push and the PTA’s manufacturing data point to a sequencing problem rather than a single fix. Even if mobile and tablet taxes come down as the committee is recommending, that alone doesn’t close the 5G-readiness gap in local manufacturing. Encouraging local assemblers to build 5G-enabled devices, as the PTA chairman said is already underway, will need to happen on a parallel track for tax relief to actually translate into wider 5G device availability once networks roll out.

For consumers, the more immediate impact of any tax reduction would likely be felt in device affordability generally, rather than 5G access specifically, since most locally made phones aren’t yet built for 5G regardless of price. Whether that changes depends on how quickly local manufacturers move on 5G-capable production, a shift that’s been flagged as encouraged but not yet mandated or subsidized in any way described to the committee.

Why The Tax Debate Is Worth Watching

Tax policy on mobile devices has direct consequences for how quickly new technology reaches ordinary users in Pakistan, and this committee session makes clear that lawmakers see current rates as a genuine obstacle rather than a minor friction point. But the PTA’s own data shows tax relief is only half the equation. Until local 5G-capable manufacturing scales up to match the country’s existing device production volume, lower taxes on phones that can’t run 5G won’t accelerate the rollout the committee says it wants to protect.

What happens next, whether these recommendations translate into an actual finance bill amendment, and whether local manufacturers move faster on 5G-enabled assembly, will determine if this session marks a real policy shift or just another round of committee recommendations that don’t make it into implementation.