ISLAMABAD: The government has decided to introduce regulatory duty (RD) with a minor penalty for unregistered used mobile phone sets.
The blocked mobile phone will be unblocked only following the payment of RD along with the penalty at the nearest customs point.
Approximately, it has been estimated that imports of illegal phones in the market cause roughly $1.5 billion in revenue losses to the government exchequer annually.
Contrary to this, the legal imports value of mobile phones reached $847.656 million in 2017-18. Over the years, the legal imports dropped which at one time crossed $1bn mark following an increase in the customs duty leading to their smuggling.
It has been observed that most of the used and refurbished mobile phones that are being smuggled into the country using different channels will be blocked through Device Identification, Registration and Blocking System (DIRBS) mechanism.
In May 2018, the Pakistan Telecommunications Auth¬ority (PTA) launched the DIRBS mechanism to counter the spread of substandard and used phones being smuggled into the country.
