President of Lasbela Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI), Ismail Suttar has said that the budget 2017-18 seems to be an initiative to give relief to the common people to some extent. It may be called investment promotion and to boost agriculture production. He said it is a balanced budget for the economic revival to resolve energy crises.
Commenting on the budget, he said more steps are required to ensure industrial growth and to address the difficulties to achieve export target. The budget has also not ensured any concrete steps for the promotion of hydel power generation to take advantages hydel power potential in the country.
He said that enormous volume debt is also a great burden on the economy for which Rs 1400 billion have been allocated for debt servicing. This amount should have been spent on the infrastructure development of the country. The reduction of duty and taxes on various machinery and industrial items would however leave positive effects on the industry to some extent but cannot be termed as incentive. While appreciating the measures taken for the agriculture growth he apprehended that whatever has been announced for this sector has not been given to it in the past. That is why the farmers' standard of living remained unchanged. The need is to build big water reservoirs to store the flood water which may be used throughout the year helping to enormous increase in the agriculture products. On the one hand government has estimated the need of millions of houses to accommodate the homeless people of the country but on the other hand the budget has not given any incentive to the construction industry and on the machinery and equipments used in this industry. This issue should have been address in the wake of CPEC as well.
He said that it is an appreciable step however for the ordinary citizens that the concept of provisional income tax assessments has been abolished by omitting the respective section from the income tax ordinance. The rate of tax of 15 percent for filers and 20 percent for non filers is also reasonable to expand the tax net.
The increase in the tax in dividend and imposition of flat rate of capital gain tax would not only leave negative impact on capital market but also would badly affect many other sectors. Conclusively it may be said that the proposed budget measures may not help to reduce the cost of doing business to boost industrial and agriculture growth to an optimum level. It is very important for the government to understand that we have a huge population whose needs to be absorbed in such a way that each and every member of the society adds something to the GDP.
This is only possible by taking initiatives and measures for the industrial growth for which actions on war footings are required which can ensure rapid industrialization across the board in all the provinces focusing on rapid growth of SME's which will result in massive employment. Chairman, Pakistan Tanners Association (PTA) hailed the Federal Budget for the year 2017-18 wherein all major demands of leather sector have been accepted and incorporated in the budget.
Removal of custom duty on import basic raw materials for the Industry (Raw hides & skins/pickled and wet blue) as we proposed to ministry of commerce, which was the fundamental need for the Industry to meet the scarcity of raw materials for necessary value addition with innovation to meet the foreign buyers/customers demands as country is now facing acute shortage of animals due to excessive slaughtering and no breeding or farming to raise live stock and thereby hides and skins are not enough for our industry.
Announcement for the release of all pending claims specially RPO's for the Sales Tax to leather sector of Pakistan on or before 14th Aug, 2017 would obviously facilitate our member exporters to avert their financial stringencies to have working capital for the smooth execution of exports orders with convenience, which was the dire need of the industry. Retained leather sector being one of the core sectors of the industry as "continuous zero rating" industry of the country, among others.
Anjum Zafar urged that minimum turnover tax of 1.25% announced in budget should not be levied on export sector under final tax regime 115(4) which is 1% presently and is already much higher than normal taxation and export sector is already under lot of pressure of high cost of doing business. Zafar urged to allow exemption of duties on import of tanning machineries, as has already been allowed/exempted for textile & poultry, as this specific leather sector desperately needs up-gradation with new machines/new technology to produce innovative fashion & attractive leather.
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