EDITORIAL: Prime Minister Imran Khan while inaugurating the Pakistan Austria Fachhochschule Institute of Applied Science and Technology (PAF-IAST) at Haripur, targeted to set up an integrated technology park with business incubation centres and units for small and medium enterprises, stated that Pakistan must capitalize its large youth pool and talent for scientific innovation and technical productivity. Fully aware of the government's serious financial constraints, the Prime Minister added that he is considering diverting money recovered by the Asset Recovery Unit (ARU) to the education sector.
While the ARU claims to have unearthed more than 5 billion dollars in assets held illegally abroad by Pakistani nationals, mainly by senior political leadership of the country, yet details of precisely how much has been repatriated by the ARU are not available through reports indicate that: (i) 190 million pounds was repatriated last year after the UK's National Crime Agency agreed to an out-of-court settlement with a large property developer in Pakistan and its repatriation to Pakistan; and (ii) 530 million dollars was recovered sometime in March this year, a claim reported by a section of the media. While granted that unearthing illegally transferred money takes time and its return even more time yet one would hope that this Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaaf (PTI) manifesto pledge will eventually bear fruit.
There are, however, some serious concerns about the government's capacity to divert money towards any specific sector, and this is not to deny that an improvement in education levels does have the potential to fuel development in the long term, given the paucity of available resources. Disturbingly, in spite of the fact that the third Chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) was recently appointed in less than one year or perhaps because of it, the tax reforms agreed with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the 6 billion dollar Extended Fund Facility programme have not been implemented. The actual tax collections remain hostage to a structure that is widely regarded as unfair, inequitable and anomalous; and which is also partly held responsible for the persistent failure of the government to increase exports in a meaningful manner, or so stated Razzak Dawood, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Commerce, during a meeting of the relevant parliamentary standing committee. Dawood argued that there is an anti-export bias in the tax structure as the government "devours" additional customs duty and regulatory duty.
The tax to Gross Domestic Product ratio declined last year to 9.5 percent, which is even lower than the 9.9 percent in 2018-19. This ratio was in double digits during the previous administration which no doubt prompted Prime Minister Imran Khan to discuss the possibility of appointing Haroon Akhtar Khan - a technocrat - who had held the portfolio of Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Revenue during the PML-N tenure.
Speaking during another interaction on the same day, the Prime Minister directed chief secretaries to pay attention to eradicating the patwari culture through the introduction of digitization of land records and transfers. In this context it is relevant to note that the World Bank and the Punjab government partnered to complete a project for digitization of Land Records and Management and Information System, a project which lasted ten years (2007-16) and included digitization of 56 million land records, 5 million were corrected, and over 140 service-based centres made operational in all 36 districts, now serve 20 million landowners. Thus the patwari culture can be easily ended in Punjab.
Total land revenue record of Sindh consists of 5979 Dehs with 5,680 Dehs computerized with the record of 3,600 Dehs supplied to District Administration for verification with the original record. Only 1,200 Dehs have yet been verified by the Districts and the remaining is in progress. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa allocated 380 million rupees for digitization of land records last year while the issue of the merged districts has surfaced leading to around 78 deaths post-merger while Balochistan has yet to engage in land digitization. So ending the patwari culture is likely to be a long haul.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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