ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance on Friday cleared Limited Liability Partnership (Amendment Bill) 2020 and the Companies Amendment Bill 2020; however approval of the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Second Amendment 2020 was deferred following stiff resistance by the opposition members in the committee.

A meeting of the committee presided over by Jamil Ahmed Khan in the absence of Chairman Faiz Ullah met on Friday to consider and approve three laws to comply with the recommendations of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) - Limited Liability Partnership Amendment Bill 2020, The Companies Amendment Bill 2020, and The Anti-Money Laundering (Second Amendment) Bill, 2020.

However, despite government effort to get the AML Second Amendment Bill approved from the committee, it has been delayed till Monday. The Adviser to the Prime Minister on Finance, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, who appeared for the first time in the finance committee, made a brief statement that the FATF issue was not specific to any party rather it was a national issue.

He said that everyone wanted the country to be removed from the grey list of the FATF and the government had also been trying to comply with the FATF actions plan. Pakistan, he said, so far completed 14 actions plan and 13 were yet to be completed. Shaikh added that Pakistan had not been able to increase its export and foreign direct investment as well as improve living standard of the people.

Although the committee held two sittings one in the morning and other in the afternoon for discussing clause by clause AML Second Amendment Bill, the stiff resistance by the opposition members in the committee forced the treasury members to postpone the proposed law till Monday. Some members of the committee wondered about the urgency shown by the government for approval of the proposed law in haste.

Naveed Qamar, Nafisa Shah as well as Ali Pervez and Aisha Ghaus Pasha stated that approval of the law in the present form would be catastrophic for the economy and businesses, and on top of that the opposition wanted exclusion of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) role.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020