LAHORE: The government of Punjab will launch a mobile phone application for all business-to-government (B2G) and public-to-government (P2G) payments in order to facilitate the public and improve revenue collection through an easy payment solution, disclosed Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Hashim Jawan Bakht.
The application was being developed jointly by the Punjab Finance Department and the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB), he said while chairing a joint meeting of the finance department and PITB at the Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA).
“The programme will allow people of Punjab to pay taxes using three different electronic payment channels namely mobile banking, ATM and over the counter (OTC),” he said.
The minister was of the view that the application would be a helpful alternative to the decades-old payment process, which involved physical visits to collection offices around the province for tax payments. “Those visits required customers to stand in long queues and wait for many hours to pay their taxes,” he said.
“Such practices indirectly encouraged bribery and corruption but the mobile phone application will allow customers to pay their dues from the comfort of their homes.”
In its first phase, 12 different taxes of the Excise Department, Board of Revenue, PRA, Punjab Land Record Authority and Industry Department would be paid through the application.
These taxes include token tax, motor vehicle registration, transfer of motor vehicle, property tax, professional tax, cotton fee, e-stamping, mutation fee, sales tax on services, Punjab infrastructure development cess and business registration fee.
The application will allow people of Punjab to generate a 17-digit unique PSID number that can be used to pay necessary taxes thorough internet/mobile banking, ATM or visiting a bank.
“Additionally, it is also planned to include government-to-public (G2P) and government-to-business (G2B) payment models in future to broaden the horizon of the programme,” the minister added. “The name and final launch date of the application will be announced soon,” Bakht said.
