ISLAMABAD – Federal Minister for Communications and Postal Services MuradSaeed Sunday said the Pakistan Post was planning to launch ForeignRemittance Initiative (FRI) for Overseas Pakistanis to offer them cost-freemoney transfer service.
The minister, during a press briefing here at Economic CooperationOrganization (ECO) Postal Staff College, said the proposal had been sent tothe National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) and State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) forapproval in the last month.
He said the initiative would enable Pakistani expatriates to send theirhard-earned money to their loved ones at door step with the help of thePak-Post.
He said the FRI was aimed at encouraging the overseas Pakistanis to remittheir cash through legal means which would eventually lead to boost foreignexchange reserves of the country.“Around US 20 billion dollars are being remitted via Hawala-Hundi,annually”, Murad claimed, adding that the prime objective of FRI was tocurb this menace.
Highlighting his ministry’s last six months performance, he said, therevolutionary measures had been taken to bring significant changes in thedepartment in line with the vision of Prime Minister Imran Khan.
The minister said the volume of mail and revenue had increased, addingthat, only in Express Post the traffic had gone to 4.5 million mail itemsfrom 3.2 million during the last six months of current year as compared tosame period of the last year.
For Express mail, the revenue had increased to Rs 291 million from Rs.188million for the same period, he added.
Read Top Stories
Murad said, the Pakistan post had met the revenue target in nine months dueto an overwhelming response of government and private sector which hadswitched to the national courier services for their courier needs.
Recently the SBP had agreed to support digitization of more than 7,000rural post offices to meet the goals of financial inclusion especially inrural areas, he maintained.The minister said E-Commerce initiative had booked more than 46,000packets, earning around 3.5 million in two months’ time.
Pakistan Post was currently negotiating a strategic partnership withDaraz.Pk which would allow Daraz to use the Post’s infrastructure for firstand last mile delivery of packets and parcels, he said.614 franchise post offices, the minister said, had been activated on NADRAe-sahulat kiosks.The revolutionary launching of EMS plus was a great step and had proved asfast, reliable and affordable service.
As many as 50,000 boxes of different sizes were supplied so far tofacilitate customers in first phase to discourage an archaic method ofparcel sending.At least 80,000 more boxes had been provided in post offices, he added.
