Now that the Sindh High Court has quashed the Federal Government's duty-free tractors import scheme, which was announced in the current financial year's budget, all those hurt by the protracted delay in its implementation will heave a sigh of relief.
This has reference, in particular to the farmers, for whose benefit it was launched. For, as the two-member SHC bench, comprising Mr Justice Muhammad Mujibullah Siddiqui and Mr Justice Syed Zawar Hussain Jafari, has specifically pointed out, in their judgement, the entire proceedings suffered from lack of transparency, smacked of subjective decision making, arbitrariness, and excess of jurisdiction as well as favouritism.
The judgement was given on two constitutional petitions, filed by the Shahzad Riaz Trade Links and the Fecto Belarus Tractors Limited. Significantly, the court observed that the entire proceedings, initiated with the advertisements inviting proposals for import of agriculture tractors, were not in accordance with the decision of the Economic Co-ordination Committee of the Cabinet.
It will be noted that the Industries and Production Ministry had allowed three parties, Dewan Automotive Engineering Limited, Universal Tractors Pakistan (Pvt) Limited, and Agro Tractors Limited to import 7,500 tractors, out of total of 10,000 tractors, and had completed all the paper work to allocate 2,500 tractors to the Hero Tractors Limited, but the decision was later withheld, after SHC stayed the duty-free tractor scheme.
It has been noted that initially the firm had submitted deletion programme of the Belarus Tractors to the Engineering Development Board, but later replaced it with the agreement of the Ukrainian company. However, it imported parts worth millions of rupees under agreement with the Belarus Tractors, which was a clear violation of criteria set by the Federal Government.
As such, the court has directed the members of the committee, constituted by the ECC, headed by the Prime Minister, to devise a detailed scheme, containing modalities for the proper implementation of the ECC decision, while asking it to prescribe the criteria, in line with the ECC decision, along with measures, to be adopted for achieving the purpose of the tractors' supply to the farmers at reasonable rates, and to put in place safety-valves, to prevent misuse of duty-free tractors scheme.
More to this, the court also directed that after devising the detailed scheme, giving the parameters, conditions, requirements, timeframe, and other necessary guidelines, the scheme be re-advertised to invite proposals, and thereafter, to recommend import of tractors to those companies/investors found eligible and most suited.
It has also been recalled that the ECC, in its original decision, had allowed import at zero tariff to tractors in CBU condition, but the CBR issued exemption notification, under section 20 of the Customs Act, extending the benefit to the import in CKD condition tractors also.
The court also observed that it was not known as to how the import in CKD condition was included in the facility. It will be noted that the court struck down the exemption notification, issued by the Revenue Board, to the extent of import of tractors in CKD condition, having found that beyond the purview of the ECC decision. It has declared that the existing notifications are not to be acted upon.
Now that the long-drawn-out inconsistencies in the implementation of the well-intentioned duty-free tractors import plan have come to an end, though too late in the day, the government would do well to learn the right lessons from its logical conclusion: that instead of rushing with ambitious populist scheme of things, it would better pause and ponder over eliminating the likely causes of delay in their implementation.