SCCI chief criticises budget

Business community has termed the federal budget for financial year 2018-19 as political incentive and election budget under the prevailing economic conditions of the country, saying the budget was not growth-oriented. Zahidullah Shinwari, president of the SCCI, while commenting on the budget for financial year 2018-19 said that no initiatives were proposed for development of smaller federating units, especially Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, while SCCI proposal to give boost export with Afghanistan was also not incorporated in the proposed budget for next fiscal year.
He said the abolishment of regulatory duty was longstanding demand of the chamber, which had made part of the proposed finance bill instead of its withdrawal. He said the audit of corporate sector one time in three years, improvement in capital market investment and reduction in various taxes as good steps in the next year budget.
However, he added that no initiative was proposed to get rid from the loans economy. Shinwari said the government had collected over Rs 4000 billion on head of various taxes as compared to releases of refunds of Rs 400 billion. SCCI chief said there was not set any priorities regarding promotion of exports in the budget. He said the reduction in withholding tax (WHT) from 0.6 to 0.4 percent for non-filers would not bring improvement but it will discourage those people which were in the tax-net.
Shinwari said the sum of Rs 1000 billion had allocated under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in the next fiscal year, but there was no share of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which would affect the development process in the province. SCCI chief termed the budget for fiscal year 2018-19 is not growth oriented, but it was negation to those reforms and initiatives, which had taken by former federal minister for finance Ishaq Dar. He said the trade deficit is touched around $35 billion dollars as compared to current deficit of $15 billion, but there was no proposal to the fill huge gap of trade deficit.
He said in the country, foreign exchange reserves were not available for last two months, adding that this would be first budget, in which importance was given to expenditure. He added that no mechanism was proposed in the budget to reduce expending and enhance revenue. Shinwari said the economic development of underprivileged provinces was completely ignored in the budget, especially for small traders and SMEs. He said the imposition of Rs 30 per litre tax on petroleum products will bring a new wave of price-hike in the country, which would impact not only on country's economy, but also on purchasing power of the common man.