KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah Wednesday called for giving collection of General Sales Tax (GST) rights to the provinces.
He was talking to Country Representative of International Monetary Fund (IMF) Tokhir Mirzoev who called on him at the Sindh Chief Minister House, said a statement issued here.Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput, Secretary Finance Hassan Naqvi and officers of IMF attended the meeting.
The IMF Country Representative discussed economic status of Sindh, development activities. He also discussed the IMF report released recently in which emphasis had been laid on the usage of federal funds more sagaciously particularly for social sector and simultaneously provincial government should enhance its own resources.
Murad said that the Sindh government had achieved almost all its tax collection targets by Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) Excise & Taxation but only Board of Revenue remained little lagged behind in achieving its target.
The SRB achieved the target of Rs78 billion while the Excise department collected over Rs52 billion, he said. Adding that the Agriculture Income Tax target had been increased from Rs 650 million to Rs1 billion.
The chief minister said that the total provincial receipts are Rs 199.626 billion while the major chunk of Rs627.3 billion comes from the federal government.
He further said that the provincial government had requested the federal government to allow provincial governments to collect sales on behalf of the center for onward distribution among the provinces as per their agreed share.
