The Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) has demanded of the federal government a fixed commission on its domestic commercial operations, besides implementing the Economic Co-ordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet decision of granting it four percent return on imports operations.
Sources said ECC in its decision in 1976 approved four percent commission for TCP on its imports and it was not being implemented in letter and spirit. TCP was allowed fixed return on its commercial operations to help it meet expenditures that occur on handling and managing of the consignments.
However, for years the Finance Ministry was allowing different commission rates on different operations that ranged between 0.5 percent to 2 percent.
Sources said the TCP has taken up the matter with the Finance Ministry, reminding it of the ECC decision taken way back in 1976 to ensure that it get fixed commission of four percent on all its commercial operations.
The TCP argues that by all commercial operations it means imports as well as operations carried out by it on the direction of the government in the domestic market.
TCP enters into different operations for import of different items, which run short in the local market for one way or another and the government comes under criticism from the public at large.
TCP's role as intervener became more important than ever before during the last almost one year when a number of items ran short in the local market and the government had no other option but to direct TCP to move fast to arrange the required items from the international market and bring it in the local market before it gets too late to ensure supply of such items in the open market and consumers get fleeced by the profiteers.
Sugar, gram, urea, lentils one can name a number of items that were imported by TCP during the last fiscal year. TCP also remained an active player in the domestic market on different fronts, cotton was one of them. TCP is the only tool available with the government that can be used whenever and wherever needed by the government to release pressure on the local market.
Sources said despite urgency of the nature of the assignments of different items, TCP was following a prudent management system to ensure that all its operations run on total commercial basis. And its result was a record profit on its imports operations during the last fiscal year.
Sources said the Trading Corporation of Pakistan's (TCP) turnover for 2005-06, stood at Rs 26 billion, bringing its profit to Rs 576 million on imports. Its operations included import of urea, sugar, grams, different types of lintels from September 2005, to June 2006.
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