ISLAMABAD: State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday introduced new measures to facilitate Information Technology exporters and freelancers for increasing exports of IT and IT-enabled services.
The central bank has increased the permissible retention limit of IT exporters from 35 percent to 50 percent of their export proceeds in the Exporters’ Specialized Foreign Currency Accounts.
Meanwhile, the usage of the balances available in the ESFCAs has been simplified by allowing the exporters to make their payments from these accounts without any approval from the State Bank or banks.
The banks have also been asked to facilitate the issuance of debit cards, enabling the exporters to make online payments from the balances available in their ESFCAs.
State Bank of Pakistan’s Newly Introduced Measures
SBP said in a statement that a new Framework for Freelancers has been introduced to further ease the opening of their bank accounts and allow higher retention of amounts in their foreign currency accounts.
It added that the freelancers would now be able to open bank accounts both physically and digitally at their choice with minimum documentation requirements.
The statement said that the ESFCAs should be opened concurrently with the opening of the primary PKR account. Under the newly introduced measures, the freelancers could retain 50 percent of their export proceeds or $5,000 per month.
