A meeting of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance Friday appeared worried on the current economic situation of the country, saying the government policies do not seem to be moving in the right direction.
A meeting of the committee chaired by Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh held a long session with representatives of chambers to discuss the government's economic policy. The representatives of business community stated that they were not consulted before the decision to impose regulatory duty (RD) while chairman of the committee Qaisar Ahmed Sheikh said that the RD imposed by the Federal Board of Revenue without consultation with the Parliament or the business community.
Some members said that there was total confusion how the regulatory duty will be implemented on goods which are landing on ports and their LCs were issued before the RD was imposed.
The chairman of the committee said that business community was faced with the issue of cost of doing business, refund blockage, high interest on agriculture lending and increase in corruption, and remarked that corruption alone in the country was around 13 percent of the GDP. This, he said, was pointed out by Dr Mahboob decades ago.
Some representatives of business community urged the government to provide low rate energy to industries in order to make them competitive with their regional competitors in the international market in terms of exports. Parliamentary Secretary on Finance Rana Muhammad Afzal Khan on the issue of RD said that meeting between the FBR and businessmen can be arranged to resolve the regulatory duty issue.
The committee recommended that another meeting of the committee would be convened to formulate the discussion points about economic policy. The committee also decided that leading industrialists, businessmen and stakeholders from stock exchange would be invited to the committee to take their input in the discussion points of the economic policy.
Comments
Comments are closed.