IT exporters fight bankers in court
KARACHI: On Wednesday, at a seminar attended by members of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and commercial banks, IT professionals working for abroad clients launched a barrage of concerns regarding remittances.
Karobar
The seminar, which was hosted by the Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) and the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunication in association with the SBP and the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), provided an opportunity for IT contractors to debate bank officials about the system governing inward and outward dollar payments.
Despite the SBP and commercial banks' and IT professionals' insistence on going digital, burdensome documentation requirements and in-person branch visits predominated the question-and-answer session.
According to one participant, "Banks made progress in digitizing their services during COVID-19, but there appears to be a reversal in their approach in subsequent years." Before carrying out even a straightforward outward remittance, banks require letters from PSEB and P@SHA, he continued.
Another issue brought up by a software exporter concerned the variations in dollar rates that banks provide to various customers each day.
IT experts brought up the exporters' unique foreign currency account, which allows them to keep up to 35% of their dollar revenues to be used for various forms of payments abroad in the future. They claimed that many bankers working in branches lacked knowledge of such schemes, which caused uncertainty and delays for software exporters. The majority of replies from banking industry representatives focused on the issue of procedural ignorance among IT workers. In a roundabout way, bankers accused independent contractors and software exporters for not getting in touch with the two persons who were officially designated in every commercial bank to help them solve their issues more quickly.
One banker, who claimed that his company had 1,700 branches nationwide, claimed that branch staff members weren't always knowledgeable about the most recent SBP circulars and other regulatory developments that have accelerated in recent years.
When asked whether it was appropriate to prevent someone from using (or remitting) their "earned income," the SBP representative responded that the limitations on foreign exchange flows were in place due to the paucity of dollars. Once the economy starts to strengthen, the central bank would broaden the scope of benefits offered to software exporters, he said.
