KARACHI: Business leaders have expressed strong reservations about the Finance Supplementary Bill 2021-22, claiming that it will have serious implications for trade and industry.
They believed the bill should be revised with input from all significant parties. The businesses said in an united statement that the finance law, which was submitted on the “dictation of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” will harm commerce and industry while also putting a burden on the poor and middle-class through inflation.
The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) Standing Committee on Horticulture Chairman Ahmad Jawad told media, “The economic managers are putting Pakistan at risk for a small $1 billion.” “Despite the fact that the government expects to receive $32 billion in remittances and $31 billion in exports by the end of this fiscal year,” he said, “all of this is only to access the last tranche of the IMF.”
He believed that eliminating sales tax exemptions on various agricultural seeds, agriculture inputs, and farm equipment would be a fatal blow to the “already suffering farming community,” raising their cultivation costs by 5 to 10%.
The government is imposing “unnecessary levies” through the financial law, he said.
“At a time when governments throughout the world are lowering taxes to benefit the needy, our government is imposing new taxes,” he observed.
Pakistan used to be self-sufficient in agricultural output, but today it needs to import wheat and sugar, according to Jawad.
“The IMF advised raising tax income by roughly Rs350 billion as a condition of the IMF’s sixth review by its executive board,” revealed AHL Head of Research Tahir Abbas.
As a result, rather than proposing new tax measures, the administration chose to eliminate specific exemptions and standardise the general sales tax (GST) to meet the target, he noted.
“Now that the bill has been passed by the National Assembly, it will be nice if some adjustments are made appropriately,” said Zulfikar Thaver, President of the Union of Small and Medium Enterprises (UNISAME).
He thought it was troubling that the government did not communicate with the business community before passing the mini budget.
