Chairman, SITE Association of Industry, Mohammad Irfan Moton, took a serious note of dishonouring the sales tax refund cheques by State Bank of Pakistan due to change of Bank's name. Expressing concern he said that there is a general complaint from all over by our members that the cheques issued by Sales Tax Department are being returned by SBP with the reason that the beneficiary's Bank name has changed.
Irfan Moton said that these changes in Bank's name are due to mergers of banks, until now all such cheques with unchanged names were paid by SBP, some mergers are now more than five-year old. For example, previously Metropolitan Bank and Habib Bank AG Zurich merged in 2006 to form Habib Metropolitan Bank Ltd.
He said that the recipients of sales tax refund cheques have already suffered a lot in delayed Sales Tax Refunds and now this additional delay is another unnecessary financial burden on them. He urged the Governor State Bank to look into the matter and resolve this issue urgently to avoid additional delays and devise a long-term solution to effect the change in the systems. Irfan Moton was of the opinion if the change is made through a request letter from the Bank rather than Business Houses to avoid huge work load at Sales Tax Computer Department.-PR