During their recent meeting with the Pakistani negotiating team, officials of the International Monetary Fund have expressed concerns over the widening fiscal deficit of the country and advised the government to create export surplus. Question is who is the IMF to advise the sovereign government of Pakistan to do this and that? This is the case. When you ask for money for everything, you will have to be answerable for everything. The exports are falling and trade deficit are on the rise. On another note, the energy crisis persists as were at the time the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz took over the rein of the country four years ago. Load shedding and load management still haunt the industrial sector as well as the domestic consumers. The nose-diving exports graph has been widening the trade deficit and the government is far from taking any practical step to strengthen the power distribution system. If electricity generation is less than the requirement, the line losses are adding insult to injury. The officials in the water and power development authority are still unclear how many units are produced how much are lost under the head of line losses. The corrupt elements are freely using the national resources and the genuine taxpayers and simpleton domestic consumers are made to pay the exorbitant bills.
In the tax collection domain, only less than one million pay taxes in a country of over 200 million and half of the taxpayers are from the salaried classes. The road and streets are narrowing with every passing day with new cars and business centers are infested with branded stores, but tax collection still could not be picked up. The salaried class is obliged to pay taxes and the genuine taxpayers are often forced to pay extra taxes. The policymakers should revisit their steps and revised their policies to identify the reasons as to how people are shy of coming into the tax net. The IMF has every right to dictate and sometime it is blessing in disguise as it pinpoints problem areas in the national economy. According to the Mission of the fund, in the absence of any timely step,Pakistan’s current account deficit could reach 2.9 percent of its gross domestic product during the current fiscal year.The IMF warning came at a time when finance minister himself admitted that revenue collection has been facing Rs100 billion shortfall due several unavoidable reasons. One of the reasons he mentioned is the low oil prices, but in fact it is not the case. Taxes on import commodities should not be taken as the sources of income. The real income comes through trade, industry and investment and not from imposing new duties and taxes on imports and exports.
