ISLAMABAD: State Minister for Revenue Hammad Azhar has disclosed that Pakistan has obtained actionable tax information of approximately 150,000 cases from 28 jurisdictions.
Talking with Customs Today at the Parliament House, he said the data obtained is being examined and cross matched against the existing tax payers. He said it is hoped that the substantial number of non-filers and under filers would be detected and added to the tax base of the country.
He said Federal Board of Revenue is also fully cooperating with Federal Investigation Agency to probe into money laundering done through benami accounts. Pakistan has signed the multilateral convention on mutual administrative assistance in the tax matters (the multilateral convention) under article 6 of the multilateral convention. Pakistan has also signed Multilateral Competent Authority. The MCCA enable the exchange of bank accounts and financial information of Pakistan tax resident person. He confirmed that the first of such data exchange took place on September 30, 2018.
In reply to a question, the minister said the banking sector of Pakistan holds 72.5 percent share in the asset base of the overall financial sector and is performing satisfactorily in the last few years. He further said that liquidity position of the banking sector is strong as liquid assets to total assets ratio has remained on average at 53.3 percent in the last three years.
Encouragingly, liquid assets to total deposit ration remains at a high level of 73.2 percent (last three year average). He said the banking sector has a high Capital Adequacy Ratio of 16.I percent well above the minimum global and local requirements of 9.875 percent and 11.275 percent, respectively.
