KARACHI: Pakistan Business Forum (PBF) says despite the fragile economic position of the country the business community were expecting some relief for the industry, but unfortunately no concrete measure were proposed in the budget speech before National Assembly by the finance minister.

PBF President Khawaja Mehboob ur Rehman said new taxes are slapped in the shape of capital gain tax on real estate and on securities. It will further decline the real estate as one of the major job creation industry in Pakistan.

He said allocation of mark-up and risk sharing scheme for farm mechanisation of Rs 5 billion is too little. It must be revised. However allocation of Rs 206 billion for cleaning of water, climate change and food security is a welcome step. Similarly 79 billion rupees allocation for IT sector was also welcome.

PBF also welcomes the export refinancing scheme allocation from Rs3.8 billion to Rs13.8 billion. It also welcomes to remove the sales tax exemption on FATA/ PATA industries in order to provide equal opportunities for other industrial areas of the country. Mehboob further said we expected that in the today budget speech that government may announce special measure to support export-led growth, including access of credit regime but at that point speech of finance minister was silent. Also mostly things were hidden in the speech, he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024