New media licenses to provide $3 billion investment

ISLAMABAD: New licenses issued by Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) would inject investment of approximately $2-$3 billion, said Economic Survey 2019-2020 released on Thursday.

The growth of the media industry has multiplied rapidly during the last decade, with a cumulative investment of approximately $4-$5 billion and providing employment to more than 300,000 people.

PEMRA has issued 254 licenses for FM Radio so far while the number was 240 till March 2019. Similarly, PEMRA has issued 4,062 Cable TV licenses while the number was 4,007 till March 2019.

Besides collecting advance tax at the time of issuance of licenses and their renewal, PEMRA has deposited a total of Rs1,053,226,106 in the Federal Consolidated Fund (FCF).

The government had allocated Rs200 million for the modernisation of camera and production equipment of state-owned Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV).

The government has released Rs160 million from July–December and PTV is importing electronic/IT equipment to upgrade its channels from standard definition technology to high definition technology. The equipment is expected to be imported by the last quarter of FY2020.

PTV is improving signal quality to terrestrial network in the less-developed areas of Pakistan, for which Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast (DTMB) project, supported by a Chinese grant, is in the pipeline.

According to the pre-budget document, the number of registered TV sets holders as of January 31, 2020 are 20,528,134.

Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) has been allocated a budget of Rs 4,422.621 million to meet employees and operational-related expenses for FY2020. The government released Rs2,300.159 million till March 31 for the expenditure of first two-quarters of financial year 2019-2020.