Summary Pakistan Economy Watch president said FBR exploited the investors leading to failure of govt policy
LAHORE: (Daily Dunya) – President Pakistan Economy Watch Dr. Murtaza Mughal has on Sunday said that the federal Board of Revenue (FBR) exploited the investors which led to spoiling of the government efforts for improving the balance of payments through increasing exports, reported Daily Dunya.
Dr. Mughal said that the investors were not provided favorable environment due to which the government’s target of exports worth 27 billion dollars would not be achieved this year as well. He said that while the FBR was obstructing exporters’ refunds worth 100 billion rupees, it was allowing fake refunds without any hurdles.
“Fake cases are made to delay the refunds of the exporters while Export Development Fund, often termed as official extortion by exporters, is being promoted for improving personal relations instead of improving the exports”, said Dr. Mughal. He said that only the Textile sector benefited from GSP Plus status while most of the other prioritized trade agreements also proved useless.
Mughal said that the right of using Export Development Fund and Universal Service Fund should be given to the IT and Finance ministries so that they would be used for public good instead of using them for balancing the budget. He said that the Commerce Ministry must be saved from the dominance of Finance Ministry so that trade could progress. He said that the T-Dep was actually responsible for improving exports but it was more interested in promoting the politics among the traders. The same department is responsible for obstructing more than 2.5 billion rupees of sugar mills for the last several years.
Dr. Mughal said that this department was throwing millions of rupees for almost every exhibition and claims earning orders worth billions of rupees but neither do the exports increase nor the stats presented by it are ever endorsed by the official facts and figures. He said that the officials should not mislead the nation for serving their personal interests.
