The New Year will bring a 50 percent increase in passport fee, Pakistan Today learnt on Friday.
The Passport Department has jacked up the ordinary passport’s fee by Rs 900, bringing the new fee to Rs 3,000 from January 1, 2012. Similarly, the fee for urgent passport has also gone up by Rs 1000, raising it to Rs 5,000.
Rs 1,000 have also been added to the fee for the 72-page passport and Rs 2,000 to the fee for urgent passport of the same kind. The ordinary fee for the 100-page passport has been increased from Rs 5,000 to Rs 6,000, and in the case of an urgent passport, the fee has gone up from Rs 10,000 to Rs 12,000. The department has increased the fees to achieve a new revenue target of Rs 14 billion as compared to Rs 11 billion.
Irshad Bhatti, director at the Passport Department headquarters, told Pakistan Today that the increase in fee would enable the department to meet the set target.
Sources in the department said the government was planning to increase the passport fee since 2010 but could not materialise the idea. “It decided to raise the fees by 100 percent in July 2010,” sources revealed. “Even the Interior Ministry had ordered to increase the normal passport fee to Rs 4,100, and the urgent passport fee to Rs 8,000 from Rs 4,000. The included bank fee had to be raised to Rs 100 from an existing Rs 25,” the sources said.
They said the increase in fees may also apply to Pakistanis residing abroad. However, they added that the government had stopped the Interior Ministry from increasing passport fees at the eleventh hour to avoid public anger.
Passport fee goes up by 50 percent
