Former Chairman Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA) and Chairman Highnoon Group of Industries, Jawaid Tariq Khan has urged the government to curtail its non-productive expenditures, stop borrowing from banks and enhance import duty on luxury items to overcome the present economic crisis.
While addressing a press conference here on Wednesday, Jawaid Tariq Khan said that the current economic crisis is because of nit witted policies of the previous governments, which converted the economy into consumer market. He said that non-productive expenditure of the government itself rose multifold resulting in heavy borrowing from the banking sector.
He said the present government after coming into power had expressed its resolve that the wealthier segment of the society would be made to pay more taxes and tax net would be widened. To bring the country out of crisis, the government would have to cut down non-development expenditure by 40 per cent if not more and stop borrowing from banks, he added.
He also said that the revenue collecting agencies have failed to bring the tax collection to the level of other developing countries of the world. The industrial sector will have to be revamped, encouraged and in some cases even subsidised to make it competitive so as the exports are increased to the maximum. The import of all luxury goods will have to be stopped including import of vehicles of above 2000 cc.
Prices of petrol and hi-octane should be according to international prices but the price of diesel and kerosene oil should be subsidised because the price of diesel and furnace and kerosene oil effect transportation and generation of electricity by various industries. About the pharmaceutical industry, he said that the government did not allow medicine price increase after December 2001 while the input cost has been increased many times. The industry is presently in trouble because of depreciation of local currency and rising raw material prices.
About the energy crisis, he said that the development in recent years have proved that solar energy is the best and the cheapest source of energy available to human kind, hence from handheld batteries to jackets, school bags, garden lights, street lights, even flood lights in stadiums, parking lights, solar solution for single homes, small villages and shops, water heaters and solar powered tube wells are available and being used in the world. Pakistan can electrify its villages in deserts or in the far-flung areas of Balochistan and other provinces where grid electricity is not likely to reach in the next 50 years or may be never.
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