Is Pakistan Looking For Increased Crypto Usage?

By Rishma Banerjee

According to news published recently by a local news outlet, The News, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has chaired a meeting dedicated to the digitization of government administration, addressing the ways in which blockchain technology can be utilized to ensure efficiency, eliminate red tape, maintain transparency as well as improve the general service delivery according the government’s vision.

Sayed Zulfiqar Abbas Bukhari, the  Special Assistant to Prime Minister, invited a team of Pakistani IT experts from UAE to attend the meeting. The team briefed the prime minister on ways that these technologies could be utilised to digitalise government processes. The meeting also elaborated on “a next-generation trading platform” for the country that could be used to facilitated trade efficiency with the country’s trade partners.

The Prime Minister, in his remarks, stated:

“The digitalization will also create much-needed synergies among the government organizations for ensuring friction-less service delivery and improving ease of doing business in the country.”

He also said that digitalisation would also help in creating much-needed synergies among the government organisations in order to ensure frictionless service delivery and improve the ease of doing business in the country.

Since the beginning of the year, Pakistan has been taking some steps to make their country more crypto- and blockchain-friendly one. So much so that the deputy governor of the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) which the country’s central bank, Jameel Ahmad,  has declared that the institution is aiming to issue a digital currency by 2025. As per reports, the digital currency is aimed at reducing inefficiencies in the country’s monetary system and combat corruption. The complete deployment of the central bank digital currency, however, is set to happen by 2030. This was announced during the launch of Electronic Money Institutions (EMIs) which will be used to process digital payments.

About the same period, Pakistan had announced that it was going to implement new cryptocurrency regulations. According to reports, this would be in the form of a licensing scheme for electronic money institutions aimed at improving its record on fighting financial crime. The regulation is expected to “help to combat money laundering and terrorism financing while it will also help the regulation of digital currency throughout the country.”