When the country is on the way to recovery at a gradual pace, the government should increase its efforts to accelerate the development works of the country, said Akram Khatoon, a former president of the First Women Bank (FWB), expressing her views over the reforms plan in the country.
She said that the government has taken several steps to provide basic facilities to the people. In the meantime, it has to give more attention on the welfare works, she said.
She said that at a time when the government wants to improve the nation's living conditions by introducing new and latest technologies in the country it is also imposing taxes on import of computers and hardware. This is a very serious matter because this factor will make these things costlier. Locally, this would hurt people's sentiments, who cannot afford higher prices but are keen to provide better education to their children along with the latest technology, she said.
The government should exempt these items from import duties, especially in information technology (IT) sector, she said.
According to the latest report, during the out-going fiscal year, total exports would hardly be around 18 billion dollars, whereas the neighbouring country India's exports, only in IT sector, are more than 35 billion dollars, which has been targeted to be more than 50 billion dollars by 2010 for which they are well set to achieve.
With this tremendous economic growth, they are increasing their defence budget by 15 to 20 percent every year, "but we cannot match with them due to obvious reason, being comparatively over-constrained financial position. Thus, India has also been successful to demoralising our army as well as the general Public."
Mehreen Ilahy, co-chairperson of the standing committee on women, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), shared her views with almost same ideas and said that the government should make easy process for attaining the IT facilities in the education field and at the business offices at low cost.
"IT education is very necessary for students. It is the government's responsibility to give more concessions or more or less reduce the general sales tax or other duties on import of IT and related products," she said.
"Now, in IT sector, despite India, being much ahead of us, they have developed low price computer known as 'Simputer' being sold at around 8000 Indian rupees whereas our government has imposed 15 percent GST on IT hardware imports including computers and further 1 percent special surcharge in the proposed Budget.
"We are well aware that our education budget is one of the lowest in the world, which has been a matter of great concern. It is even more tragic that, in the current financial year, only 20 percent (1.2 billion rupees) of total budget (6.5 billion rupees) had been utilised and the balance is bound to elapse. Similarly, only 41 percent (1.95 billion rupees) has been utilised out of total allocation of 4.75 billion rupees for IT education and training.
"In this prevailing grim and grave situation, now questions arise: Will we be able to sustain our economic growth in the long term? Still, we don't take any solid and practical steps towards our education, IT in particular."
The widening trade deficit seems a factor, which is propelling the government to discourage imports, some other analysts said.
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