Central Board of Revenue (CBR) Chairman Abdullah Yusaf said that inflation rate in the country had been cut down by 3 percent during the current financial year.
He said that during the last financial year the rate was 11 percent, which had been brought down to 8 percent and efforts for further cut in it were continued.
Addressing a meeting of industrialists and traders here at the Sarhad Chamber of Commerce & Industry (SCCI), he said the government was taking measures to keep check on the prevailing inflation rate and control price hike in the country.
Regarding the unprecedented upward trend in the prices of food items, he said they linked to the supply and demand in the market.
SCCI President Ghazanfar Bilour presided over the meeting while prominent among those present on the occasion were Senator Ilyas Ahmad Bilour, Ghulam Sarwar Khan Mohmand, Zia-ul-Haq Sarhadi and senior officials of Pakistan Customs, Income Tax and Sales Tax.
The CBR chairman said that the trend of prices of food items had been changed all around the world due to unprecedented increase in the price of petroleum and a big sugar producing country had converted its industry to the use of ethanol.
He said the shortage had been occurred all around the world and governments are not in position to subsidise it. He said that three years back the price of one barrel petrol in the world market was just 25 dollars, but now it had climbed to 75 dollars.
"Such a big increase in the petrol price is out of control and has affected the entire world," he added. He said that the government even granted tax exemptions to sugar mill industry to facilitate the millers and provide cheap commodity to the people.
The CBR chief said the country has sufficient wheat stock this year and there was no pressure on its prices.
He expressed concern over the trade deficit and said it was due to lack of balance in payment and the imports were being made out of value. He termed increase in the price petrol a discouraging point. He said that import of machinery and raw material had registered increase, similarly, services sector had also registered unprecedented increase and the number of mobile phone consumers had climbed to 24 million in the country.
He said that per line cost of the company was $200 million and investment made in the sector is about $8 billion.
The agriculture sector, he said had also registered improvement and today Pakistani growers were getting price of their products according to international standard.
He said the sugarcane was being sold at the price of more than Rs 100/-per tonne, inflicting heavy loss to the sugar mill industry paid by the consumers. He said that micro-economic indicators of the country had shown improvement in increasing the credibility of the country, adding that issuance of 500 million dollars and 300 million dollars were ample proof of the people's confidence in the economic policy.
Abdullah Yusaf stressed substantial expansion of the tax net to fill the prevailing gap between tax and GDP ratio in the country. He said that Pakistan had a base of 1.3 million tax payers among which 0.6 million were government employees.
He said the trend was changed and now the total revenue had rose from Rs 300 billion to Rs 700 billion in just few years and further increase was in pipeline. But, he said, "despite these good figures we are still the lowest tax growth country."
He said, "last year we had set a 20 percent increase in the revenue growth, which will be raised by the same ratio this year too. For this purpose, he urged on the business community to educate their colleagues that government had reposed trust in them through initiating Universal Self-Assessment Scheme.
He said that further improvement would be made in the system and staff would be imparted better training to subside the culture of harassment of the taxpayers.
Yusaf Abdullah informed that retailers and whole sellers have 16 percent share in GDP and 2 percent in tax while transport sector has 16 percent share ratio in GDP and 4 percent in tax, saying that out of the millions of tax payers the number of retailers is 40,000.
He rules out exemption from sales tax on minimum sale, adding that the decision would not bring any positive result and was being considered impracticable. "There should not be one-way traffic and business community is also required to cooperate with the government in this connection," he added.
He said now the system had been totally revamped, and the businessmen should also acknowledge their responsibility and mobile them for filing of tax returns and serve the country. The change, he opined would ultimately come as they are making utmost efforts for it.
Regarding export, the CBR chief said it had been increased by 28 percent in rupees and 42 percent in dollar during the last 9 months of the current financial year, which is a record.
The matter of concern was that 42 percent increase in dollar export had been registered during the 9 months with 100 percent increase in the payment of Rs 2.2 billion as refund while during the same period last year the payment was Rs 1.2 billion.
Such unprecedented increase in the refund has created an impression that there is something wrong in the system resulting in billions of rupees loss to the national exchequer. "The exporters in some cases have filed fake claims in collaboration with the officials of CBR, inflicting heavy loss to the country," he said.
He assured that the government was interested in the promotion of genuine export not merely on papers.
About difficulties in the verification of export goods through the customs authorities of Afghanistan, he asked the business community to give a workable and authenticated solution into the matter.
He said, the CBR wanted to introduce fair and transparent system and would not allow any one to file fake claims.
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