ISLAMABAD: Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Shehbaz Sharif has slammed the mini-budget and the imposition of new taxes to the tune of Rs360 billion on the people of Pakistan, saying the people are already being “butchered by the PTI government’s economic terrorism.”
Reacting to the mini-budget which was presented in the National Assembly on Thursday, Sharif warned that approving this mini-budget would be “like signing on a death-notice for Pakistan’s economy and its people.”
He said that he had warned the country that the budget 2021-22 presented by this government was a “fraud while real hammer would drop on the nation through mini-budgets.”
He said the most vulnerable sections of the society had been hit the hardest with this disastrous mini-budget. “These Rs360 billion worth of new taxes will destroy the country’s economy and the lives of its people,” he said, adding that the PTI government had promised that no new taxes or mini-budgets would be brought.
He added not a single measure of relief for poverty-stricken Pakistani people was given in this mini-budget. “Essential commodities and food items have brutally been taxed while mobile phones have been slapped with an advance income tax up to 10-15 percent,” he said. Out of these Rs360 billion of new taxes, he added that Rs353 billion would be collected from sales tax while Rs7 billion would be from income tax, whereas, there are certain other items as well, so the total tax is more than Rs360 billion.
“A whopping 17 percent of taxes have been imposed on infant formula milk, dry milk, flavoured milk, any type of red chilies, yogurt, bread, buns, laptops, personal computers, ghee and cooking oil, oil seeds, greenhouse farming, drip agriculture, medicines, ingredients of pharmaceutical products, various machinery, gold and silver,” he said, adding that making infant milk, yogurt, bread, buns, chilies would make life even more miserable for the people that were already on the verge of starvation because of the PTI.
He reminded how the PML-N government ensured that these essential commodities would not become expensive. He maintained that the PML-N government gave free laptops to encourage advancement of learning in the IT sector to produce more professionals, while the PTI had even targeted that by now imposing tax on computers and laptops.
“Taxing of oil and ghee would create a new crisis,” he warned, adding that the taxing of agriculture and greenhouse farming would seriously dent the farm output of the country and impact the environment adversely.
He also criticised the increase in cost of medicines and key pharmaceutical materials, adding that the government has not only made living beyond the reach of people, but has also made “dying unaffordable.”
He also strongly criticised the State Bank Amendment Act, Bill, saying that the PML-N was not against the State Bank’s independence, “but the manner in which this government has proposed this freedom is never seen or heard of in any country in the world.”
He said that being a regulator, the SBP should be independent, but it is imperative that the Finance Ministry and the State Bank should share the burden of decision making through mutual consultation. “But this SBP’s bill puts the central bank above and beyond Pakistan’s control and it would only be answerable to the IMF. No country has such a system,” he said.
He said that as the “IMF-dictated” bill, the SBP would only be responsible to control inflation and would not be able to fund the government of Pakistan, no matter how grave or dire the situation might be even in the event of a natural disasters.
He pointed out that recently when the SBP refused to fund government, private banks raised the interest rate. “Shaukat Tarin himself termed this “a disaster,” he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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