Reason behind inflation in Pakistan is middleman, corruption: Shabbar Zaidi
Reason behind inflation in Pakistan is middleman, corruption: Shabbar Zaidi
KARACHI (Dunya News) - Former Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Shabbar Zaidi said Wednesday that the reason behind inflation in Pakistan is the purchasing power of the middlemen, behind which is corruption money.
The former FBR Chairman said that both the farmer and the consumer are getting the short end of the stick in Pakistan.
In an exclusive interview with Dunya News program "Dunya Kamran Khan Kay Sath", he spoke on various topics such as inflation, tax collection and other issues plaguing the country’s economy. Shabbar Zaidi said that in Pakistan, the middleman is earning 200% profit. He is so powerful that he can increase or decrease the price of anything he wants and his purchase power is the reason behind inflation in teh country, Zaidi said.
He said that tax revenue cannot be increased by 25% this time, we will have a gap of 10% in this year’s tax target. “From my experience, the tax system has more importance than the Chairman FBR”, he added.
He said that track and trace systems are in place all over the globe and at present, this needs to be implemented in seven industries of Pakistan, especially tobacco, cement and sugar industries.
Shabbar Zaidi said that this system can be used to find out where the goods reached from and for whom. “We tried to implement track and trace system on tobacco, but the courts barred us from proceeding”, he said.
The track and trace system should be put in place sooner rather than later, but the question is whether the industrial sector wants it or not. There is resistance to the system but the state cannot implement it through force. Some agree with its implementation on the surface but actually oppose it, he added.
The former FBR chairman said that transparency was needed in NEPRA, SEPRA, FIA and other agencies. Another solution to the problem is access of bank data to FBR. There are more than 45 million business accounts in Pakistan, out of which only 10 million are registered for tax.
Moreover, there are 350,000 million industrial commercial connections in Pakistan, out of which only 45,000 are registered for sales tax while 100,000 are in the names of people who are no longer alive. In his tenure, each distribution company was asked to provide data of industrial consumers but not a single one complied, he said.
