LAHORE: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) must to cut rate of duties on all smuggling-prone items in order to check smuggling which is destroying the local industry and Federal Budget will be business friendly and energy/water-focused.
This was stated by Lahore PML-N traders wing president and vice president of Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry and political assistant to chief minister Nasir Saeed while talking to Customs Today.
He also stressed the need to bring the untaxed sectors into the tax net. The LCCI VP said that government should take decisive steps about the loss-making public sector enterprises which are sucking the blood of nation like a leech. He added that that country needs resources for infrastructure, provision of health facilities and education to the poor but these public sector enterprises are eating up hundreds billion rupees annually. He added that instead of giving huge funds to these PSEs, government should make them profitable through public-private partnership.
Nasir Saeed said that keeping in view the growing energy demand and water scarcity, there is a dire need to allocate maximum funds for energy and water projects.
He said that energy is engine of growth while being an agrarian country, availability of sufficient water is a must therefore these two particular areas should be the top priority of the government in the forthcoming budget”, the office-bearers added.
He said that sufficient energy would not only give expansion to the industrial sector and generate millions new jobs but would also doubled the exports.
The LCCI office-bearer said that government should allocate adequate funds for Kalabagh dam and Thar coal project.
He added that the country’s reliance on costly thermal power is jacking up the cost of production and the import bill as well. The country needs an urgent transfer in its energy-mix in favor of hydel power and alternate energy resources.
He suggested that use of biogas should be promoted in rural areas both for electricity generation and gas for cooking besides producing bio fertilizer.
Saeed said that over 175 billion tons of Thar coal reserves are enough to provide 100,000 MW of electricity for 100 years. Though government was doing a lot at this front but efforts should be accelerated as the uninterrupted and affordable power supplies can turn Pakistan into an economic powerhouse.
He also urged the decision makers to also focus on enforcement of law and order while lowering of tariffs on smuggling prone items, increasing the share of direct taxes in revenue and lowering the slab of indirect taxes in the forthcoming budget to achieve key economic targets set for the year 2016-17.
The LCCI VP said that a number of sectors in Pakistan including infrastructure development, coal, energy, agriculture, livestock, textiles and pharmaceutical offer lucrative investment opportunities to foreign investors but unfortunately due to absence of a proper and well-tailored marketing strategy, these opportunities are unattended even today.
