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Actor Faysal Quraishi has once again voiced his opposition to the government removing advance taxes on the import of foreign media while simultaneously saying Pakistani TV shows can — and do — compete with the best content on Netflix.

The star appeared on the podcast Fahad’s Den, where host Fahad Abid asked him why he was opposed to “removing taxes on imports”. Quraishi explained he was against the relaxation of taxes on foreign TV shows specifically.

As part of this year’s federal budget, the government announced in June it would be withdrawing advance taxes — an amount of income tax that is paid much in advance, rather than a lump-sum payment at the year-end — on payments for foreign television plays and advertisements.

“Look, back in 2013 we had a major issue when Turkish dramas started playing here… Our industry suffered a lot because of it, we lost our slots [on television]. And each of those slots represents 80 to 100 livelihoods; losing 10 slots means 1,000 people out of a job.”

The actor said this doesn’t affect him much personally as he only does one or two dramas a year now, young actors who need exposure will be deprived of primetime slots if foreign shows are taking them up.

Quraishi contended that if his industry is going to be forced to compete with foreigners, other industries should be too. “If you’re saying it should be an equal playing field, why must that only apply to dramas? Let shampoos compete with shampoos, cigarettes with cigarettes, ice cream with ice cream too, everything.”

The actor said import restrictions and taxes were imposed to give local industries a boost and questioned why other industries should get one when entertainment doesn’t.

Quraishi said the situation was made all the more dangerous with artificial intelligence (AI) being part of the creative process. He said it was now possible for studios to dub foreign media without hiring dubbing artists, with AI replicating foreign actors’ voices in Urdu and even synchronising lip movements.

Nevertheless, he said, Pakistani dramas had their place in the world and competed with Netflix and Amazon Prime series in terms of popularity.

He said despite the prevalence of OTT platforms, people across the world continued to watch Pakistani dramas and even recognised our stars.

“Brother, look our competition right now is directly with Netflix series… Our free-to-air dramas are being compared with Netflix series. Even the most expensive of our shows cost about 200 million to make, meanwhile the Indians are throwing away 300 to 400 million per episode. That’s what we’re being compared to.”

Quraishi claimed a single episode of a good Pakistani drama was getting more views than popular Netflix series in their entirety.

The actor asked Abid to turn his attention to India, which has a massive industry compared to Pakistan, but does not let Pakistani content enter its market.

He said this was being done to give India’s own productions an edge, like the country had done for decades with consumer products like cars to boost its domestic industry.