Pakistan Industrial and Traders Associations Front (PIAF) has urged the government to announce a 'realistic' budget for the year 2016-17 to achieve economic targets. The PIAF Chairman Irfan Iqbal Sheikh and Senior Vice Chairman Tanveer Ahmed Sufi in their joint statement on Friday said that government should allocate more funds towards the power generation projects as the shortage of electricity and gas had already caused irreparable loss to the overall economy and the economic activities in the country. It was imperative to achieve revenue targets that they are set realistically keeping in view the ground realities.
The fact remains that the Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and the Finance Minister Ishaq Dar were putting in their best efforts to attract much-needed foreign investment in the country but their efforts would bear fruit only when the taxation procedures are simple and their rates are on the lower side.
The government, rather than focusing only on taxation and revenue collection, should also focus on economic growth of the country, they said. PIAF has proposed to the government to increase the rate of duties on smuggling prone items while the rate of taxes for the local manufacturers should be curtailed so that the local manufacturers and dealers can compete easily in regional markets, they said. They hoped that sufficient funds would be allocated for the construction of water reservoirs in the country to provide cheaper electricity to the masses as high power tariff was hitting hard the competitiveness of Pakistani merchandise in the global market.
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