Prime Minister Imran Khan has rejected the textile traders’ demand to withdraw the CNIC requirement for conducting business.
On Wednesday, PM Khan flew to Karachi for a one-day visit where he held a meeting with Karachi’s traders at the Governor House.
During the meeting, the business community told the prime minister about their grievances. Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Adviser on Production and Industries, Abdul Razak Dawood, and Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Shabbar Zaidi, were also present.
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The textile traders are against the new condition of showing a CNIC for buying and selling.
Khan quickly shot it down, saying that this demand can’t be met because the country has already suffered enough losses because of non-taxpayers.
Business cannot be allowed to run in the old fashion. Everyone has to pay taxes to keep the mill running.
His views were seconded by Dr. Abdul Hafeez Sheikh who was surprised to learn that a large number of traders in Karachi were either evading or not paying full taxes.
“The government will not compromise on this, and everybody has to pay tax,” he said.
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Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s (KCCI) former president Zubair Motiwala, one of the attendees, talked about the meeting at a local channel.
He said that the meeting ended inconclusively as both parties could not agree on the issues, and added that the Prime Minister Imran Khan has invited the business community to Islamabad for another round of talks on Friday.
“The issues of higher sales tax on the textile sector and CNIC condition would be discussed at length,” he said.
Motiwala reflected that the issues of additional duty on machinery import, increased sales tax and income tax on electricity were discussed during the meeting.
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PM Khan directed Abdul Razak Dawood to resolve the issue of the textile industry.
He mentioned that the financial adviser made it clear that making fundamental changes in the budget was impossible.
Chairman FBR, Shabbar Zaidi stated during the meeting that he had been in contact with several businessmen and is working on different models to improve business environment and exports.
PM Khan had asked the businessmen to support the government’s policies and become its partners.
Via: Dawn
The government should take immediate steps to bring down the dollar,As dolar goes up our loans also jumps..why they dont think on this .. Hafeez sheikh ans shabbar zaidi cant bring any improvement,,they are agents to IMF….
Dollar won’t come down unless the country increases its exports and that is unlikely to happen overnight. You have to allow 3-5 years for the reforms to trickle down and take hold. Or you could borrow more money and throw the dollars in the market to keep it artificially low.
another option is for more white collar workers like the good doctor to migrate abroad and send back remittances. anyone who can leave should leave this sinking ship.
soon you will be able to use the rupee like a napkin or toilet paper.
the reason it’s crashing in value is because we borrowed a lot of dollars and used them to subsidize imports such as petroleum products. so years of such activity has left us without any forex reserves. now we have to let the rupee fall so that imports become expensive and we stop leaking borrowed dollars to pay for consumption of imported goods and services.
I don’t understand the backlash over this. We know from the whole biometric verification business that CNIC copies are a dime a dozen. So just attach some rando’s CNIC copy and no one will be the wiser. Why is there so much pushback on this point?
The IMF program is the exactly the same that was implemented in central and South American countries in the 70s and 80s which wiped out the entire middle class … 90% were in poverty with 10% rich… as we all know middle class is the backbone of all economies which itself dynamo effect … see what’s happened in Yemen … there’s 90 poor and 10% rich … another issue is that we have lack of competency … everyone know lack of competency is more dangerous than corruption… in Pakistan corruption overcomes competency … you can’t have jialas running the ministries … for example oil minister should be someone who has been in oil industry all his life at very senior global positions… there is no dearth of Pakistani resources… it seems beyond redemption