(February 17, 2020)
President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President All Karachi Industrial Alliance (AKIA), Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister, Mian Zahid Hussain on Monday said the revenue shortfall of Rs 400 billion should not be bridged through increasing taxes on edibles as it will step-up food insecurity.
The IMF directives to recover the full cost of power production from consumers should not be accepted as it will flatten the stressed economy, he said.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that IMF has refused to bring tax target down and asked to government to raise Rs200 billion after which preparations are said to be underway to increase taxes on food and other necessary items which will hit agriculture, industry, livestock and poultry sectors making it impossible for the masses to make both ends meet.
Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader fish, meat and mutton are already out of the reach of man on the street, while taxing poultry sector will reduce protein intake hitting majority.
The former minister noted that malnourished people will not be able to play their active role in economic activities which should be considered. Taxing important items will not only promote poverty but it will result in smuggling depriving the government of much-needed revenue, he added.
He said that the items on which enhanced tax is being considered include soybean meal, oil cake, solid residue, oil seeds, raw cotton and ginned cotton, plant and machinery, dairy products, poultry feed, cattle feed, incinerators for waste disposal,, motorized sweepers, snow ploughs, re-importation of foreign origin goods, which were, waste paper, plant, machinery, and equipment used for bio-diesel production, soybean seed, second hand clothing and shoes, tractors, tillage and seedbed preparation equipment, irrigation, drainage and agro-chemical equipment, seeding or planting equipment, harvesting, threshing and storage equipment, post-harvest handling and processing and miscellaneous machinery, top boxes for internet, satellite dish receivers, machinery for the poultry sector, fertilizers, products of milling industry, prepared food, foodstuff and sweetmeats supplied by restaurants, bakeries, LNG imported for servicing CNG sector etc., frozen prepared or preserved sausages and similar products of poultry meat or meat offal meat and similar products of prepared frozen or preserved meat or meat offal of all types including poultry, meat and fish, and capital goods.
