President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) and the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to address all pending issues of Exchange Companies within next 15 days. During a high level meeting at Bilawal House on Monday, which was chaired by the President, it was informed that FBR had issue a convoluted SRO to exempt the Exchange Companies (ECs) from withholding tax.
According to ECs the SRO requires a relevant commissioner to issue exemption certificate to company for one year, therefore the companies are compel to renew exemption certificate every year. Representatives of ECs complained that they were facing difficulties in this regard and asked for a general exemption. "It should be forever instead of one year," they demanded.
Member (Inland Revenue) FBR promised to look into the complaint and rectify the same. Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh assured the representatives of ECs that in case of slow response from FBR officials they could come to him. President was informed that a committee has already been constituted in State Bank of Pakistan to solve the problems faced by ECs and to workout modalities for license to franchises. The committee has two members of exchange companies and two from SBP. Exchange companies' leaders made tall claims of doing outstanding service in increasing home remittances and assure that home remittance will surge to 15 billion dollar if SBP and FBR facilitate as per demanded by them.
During the meeting, the ECs also informed that SBP was not allowing agreements with foreign companies, due to which they were facing difficulties to bring remittances. Sources said that during the meeting President asked the SBP and FBR officials to address all pending issues of exchange companies within 15 days and after that he would again hold a meeting to review the development regarding this meeting.
Federal Finance Minister Senator Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, Minister for Petroleum and Natural Resources Dr Aasim Hussain, Secretary Finance Abdul Wajid Rana, Member Internal Revenue Shahid Hussain, Governor State Bank of Pakistan Yasin Anwar and chairman ECAP Malik Muhammad Bostan were present during the meeting. It is to mentioned here that on Monday Pak rupee touched a new low of Rs 96 per one US dollar. Later it recouped to Rs 95.50 on the open market. On the interbank market the rupee parity was Rs 94.40 per US dollar. Therefore, the government is making efforts to increase inflows of dollars to maintain high foreign reserves.