The Finance Supplementary Bill 2021 named mini-budget was presented in National Assembly on December 30th, 2021, as a miserable gift to “aam admi”(common man) for the next year. It aimed to raise around Rs. 343 Billion by imposing 17% GST on imports of almost 144 to 150 items including powdered milk, edibles, local restaurants, mobile phones, computers, laptops, poultry machines, etc.
In the mini-budget, the cruelest thing seems imposing a 17% GST on formula milk which is used for infants and usually recommended by doctors in the country where nearly more than half of the women and children in Pakistan do not get enough routine food and face acute malnutrition. As these women are unable to meet their nutritional needs so do the children due to the huge population size and unequal division of resources this formula or powdered milk help infants fulfill their nutritional needs.
The formula milk under different brands like NIDO, Meiji, Morinaga, LACTOGEN, etc. gets its formula or raw form through import costs around Rs. 1150/- to Rs.1200/- will reach up to Rs. 1400/- to 1500/- after the imposition of direct 17% GST introduced in the mini-budget. The current government has aimed to earn revenue of Rs 9Bn approximately from the tax generated through the sale of this milk. It seems that the government has decided to compromise the health of a big number of infants in Pakistan. Because a layman who is getting below average salary and handling a bundle of expenses being the sole bread earner of a huge sized family hardly manages to buy a small pack of powdered milk, will be unable to contribute to the fortified nutrition of his child or children.
Our Prime Minister on the one side considers malnutrition a big agenda to resolve at its forefront while on the other side, such a heavy inclusion of GST on baby milk put a question mark on this agenda. Moreover, it is again a call to think about increasing our exports and producing his ‘formula’ in the homeland. Resultantly, it will help in several ways: promoting local production by industries will be beneficial to generate revenues, and also an initiative to think of coming out of the burden of IMF conditions alongside removing hindrances in the economic growth of the country.
Also, low tax on export items will not create that much big difference for laymen as happened with heavy taxes on imported products. Otherwise, paying no attention to such measures, as had happened in the past, would only increase the suffering for the common man no matter who is in the government and how much the taxation goes high.
