KARACHI: The acting president of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Irfan Ahmed Sarwana, has claimed that over 0.2 million audit cases were pending with the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) causing liquidity crunch for the export trade.
The FPCCI president attributed the falling exports, which have declined to $20 billion from $25 billion in 2014, to the high cost of production and inordinate delays in payment of refund claims to exporters.
He further said that as the government fails to timely pay exporters their refunds, they are forced to take loans at high markup rates to meet their export commitments to ensure timely delivery to foreign buyers.
Sarwana lamented that even after the assurance given by the finance minister for paying refund claims against which Release Payment Orders (RPOs) have been issued up to April, no development took place on this front.
It was unfortunate, he said, when nil sales tax returns filers such as exporters, sole distributors etc submit their refund claims, they are served audit notices to discourage them.
Referring to the complicated and cumbersome procedure of sales tax registration and de-registration, he said, a large number of applications are pending and this retards growth of trade and industry.
He suggested that traders should be temporarily registered with sales tax within seven days of filing of application in order to allow him to start normal business activities and that tax officials may continue their verification process at their end.
Sarwana was critical about FBR and said that the tax collecting authorities only know to collect taxes, not facilitating taxpayers.
He said that due to high cost of doing business in the country, the industrial activity was shrinking day by day which results in declining job market.
