The government on Friday faced an embarrassing situation in National Assembly when Parliamentary secretary for Commerce Noor Alam Khan refused to answer queries of MNAs during question hour. It happened in the house, when Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani was present in National Assembly.
Deputy speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who presided over the session, showed his displeasure over. the development and instructed the ministers and parliamentary secretaries to come to the house with preparation. At the same time, the Prime Minister also asked the ministers and parliamentary secretaries to come to the house with full preparation.
Meanwhile, the government informed the National Assembly that negotiation is underway to import wheat worth $48 million from US under Commodity Credit Corporation Export Credit Guarantee Program. According to Finance ministry documents provided to the House, Food and Agriculture ministry is negotiating with US department of agriculture about wheat import. However, the ministry did not inform the House about the terms of reference, saying that the negotiations are at very preliminary stage.
On a supplementary question, Minister for Economic Affairs said that there is no plan to abolish 16 per cent GST on electricity bills. On a question to the measure taken up to increase tax to GDP ratio, the Minister informed the House that five main measures have been taken by the government in this regard.
These measures are: broadening and expanding tax base; strengthening of enforcement; withdrawal of unnecessary exemptions/concessions; brining in the entire sector such as retail and services in tax net and prevention of revenue leakage through automation and re-engineering of existing process.
The Finance ministry also informed the House that the government would receive Rs 427.8 billion taxes from non-tax revenue items including interest from provinces, interest from PSEs, interest from Dividend, surplus profit of SBP, defence receipts, passport fee and recipients from Oil and Gas.
Meanwhile, Interior Ministry informed the House that 12,086 foreign prisoners detained in Pakistani jails would be handed over to their respective countries after preparation of their travel documents.
Among these prisoners 1,735 are from Afghanistan, 105 from Iran, 9 from Indian, 193 from Bangladesh, 4 from Iraq, 7 from Nigeria, 2 from South Africa, 5 from Saudi Arabia, 8 from Germany, 6 from Tajikistan, 2 Russian, 3 from Libya, one each from Tanzania Uganda , Ghan , Dominican and Uzbekistan. Responding to a question, it was informed that 8,494 rifles, 13,151 shotguns, 73,730 revolvers, 4,544 klashnikovs, 5731 carbon, 536 hand grenades, 567 magazines, and 144 rocket launchers were also recovered in the year of 2008 from different persons.