KARACHI: Chairman of the National Business Group Pakistan and President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum Mian Zahid Hussain has said the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had reduced funding under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) from Rs 900 billion to Rs 600 billion, but further cuts are necessary as subsidies on oil are burdening the exchequer too much.
The state of the economy is bad and without tough and unpopular decisions it will be impossible to revive the limping economy, he said.
He was of the opinion that the current broad-based government represents 70 percent of the country, and all political parties must agree on an agenda of economic recovery, followed by the closure or sale of all loss-making state-owned enterprises.
Mian Zahid said the dysfunctional energy sector deserves special attention as it is holding the national economy hostage by incurring losses of trillions of rupees.
He said the tax system is flawed and because of this the economy is suffocating. Punishing taxpayers and rewarding tax evaders through amnesty schemes is wrong.
Such schemes are strongly objected to by international organisations, but they are not being stopped which is giving negative signals.
Describing the tax system as “unbalanced”, he said the tax burden on the industrial sector is too much while the agricultural sector, which is almost equal to the industrial sector in size, has been given undue advantages.
One percent of the country’s landlords occupy 22 percent of its land, from which they earn at least Rs 800 billion per annum. However, they are taxed only about Rs 2 billion, which is tantamount to playing with the country’s integrity, said Mian Zahid.
The income of big landowners is constantly increasing owing to the sharp rise in the prices of agricultural commodities, but the farmer is still in a bad shape; the agriculture sector cannot develop without making farmers prosperous.
He said the country will have no future if all the central and provincial governments do not take interest in taxing agricultural income.
Arab countries have developed agriculture by making deserts green and Pakistan can do the same, but this is not even being considered. The food import bill has risen sharply to unsustainable levels, he added.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022