Hafeez meets business community leaders

Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh is said to have rung alarm bells in his briefing to the parliamentarian and business community leaders to make them feel as to how important the new measures were for recovering the ailing national economy by saying that Pakistan could default on its commitment to the international lenders on payments and finally land into more difficult financial situation if the government failed to introduce ''reformed general sales tax'' (RGST).
Sources said that the Finance Minister in his one of the briefings to the business community on proposed RGST law and its benefits to the national economy, repeatedly hurled his warning of Pakistan''s default on payments to the lenders, and consequently get into more trouble on failure to fulfil the International Monetary Fund''s (IMF) most pressed demand to implement RGST without further delay.
Hafeez also hinted on quitting the office of Finance Minister if his efforts to make the decision-makers feel that failure in introducing RGST would be a recipe of financial collapse. He has been quoted as saying in his briefings that he, along with his entire team, would go home the very next day if the parliament rejected the bill, introduced for RGST approval.
After introducing the bill in the parliament, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had tasked Hafeez to apprise the parliamentarian and business community of the advantages and disadvantages of RGST, and create among them feeling that it would help Pakistan increase its revenue collection ratio to GDP in the future.
The government is in complete disarray over RGST issue. On the one hand, IMF has pushed it literally to the wall by conveying that ''No RGST would be No more money'' from it, under agreed standby arrangement (SBA) and, on the other, it''s facing huge resistance at home from different key players, such as business community and some hard liner political parties. Taking the line, he had arranged a number of briefings for the stakeholders on the ''controversy''.
Although the government has mustered up some support for easy sailing of the bill now under discussion in the house, but it is yet to appease the opponents, outside the parliament, to settle the issue and implement some time in the current fiscal year. IMF was expecting to give two instalments of $3.4 billion in the first half of the current fiscal year but delay in RGST has made it now next to possible, at least within the government''s own plan. Even after December, release of the remaining amount of IMF bailout package would be subject to put in place the RGST.