KARACHI: “I will go home if Prime Minister expresses his dissatisfaction over the performance,” said Finance Minister Shaukat Tareen Saturday.

Speaking to media after the inaugural ceremony of Kamyab Jawan Markaz at Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), Tarin said that if the Prime Minister was not satisfied with our performance then what else we would do; we would go home.

Earlier, he said that PTI’s economic plan would help Pakistan avoid getting loans and entering into the IMF programme. Taking notice of the FBR audit exercise, Tarin said that rules have been made but its implementations are still imbalanced.

He said that only 2 million were paying income tax notice out of 38 million potential taxpayers, hence the tax authorities were going for tax collection as they had all information now.

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Furthermore, he raised questions over the requirements put forth by the FBR for the installation of POS machines, saying that fixed sales tax should be collected based on sales instead of other indicators.

The Finance minister said that the government had prioritized Agriculture, IT, Housing, and Trade for sustainable growth and hoped to achieve 7 percent growth in coming years.

He said that the government had adopted a bottom-up approach and the Kamyab Jawan program was one of its examples; adding that the Kamyab Pakistan Program (KPP), which was initially kicked off in KPK and Balochistan, was going to be expanded in rest of the provinces by February 16, 2022, and the government under the KPP, would disburse Rs140 billion per year. He also informed that the incentive program of SMEs would also be launched next week.

Talking about China’s visit, he said that Prime Minister requested the Chinese President to invest in the IT section and provide end-to-end agriculture solutions besides increasing trade with Pakistan to reduce the trade deficit.

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He was of the view that the country’s economy is in the right direction and the government has addressed the local issues but inflation is being increased due to high prices of commodities in the international market.

Usman Dar advisor to PM on youth affairs said that the youth program was running successfully because of Shaukat Tareen, who resolved issues on a priority basis hence they were disbursing Rs. 3-4 billion per month for the last four months.

He said that around 33 billion has been disbursed so far and Rs. 5 billion were given to the youth of Karachi out of a total of Rs. 7 billion disbursements in Sindh.

Karachi Chamber President Muhammad Idrees congratulated Usman Dar for bringing a successful youth program and urged the finance minister to take notice of high corruption in the customs department. Zubair Motiwala said that the government was taking good steps for the young. He said that the marketers, who were not coming under POS, were being harassed by the tax authorities and urged the finance minister that tax issues need to be resolved.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2022