SIALKOT City News

Mixed reaction to budget

From Our Correspondent

SIALKOT: The businessmen, including industrialists and exporters, have expressed mixed reaction to the federal budget.

Talking to newsmen here on Saturday, Sialkot Dry Port Trust chairman Khawar Anwar Khawaja and Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry former president Ejaz A Khokhar appreciated the government for declaring zero rated general sales tax (GST) for five major export sectors, including, textile products, leather ware, sports goods and surgical instruments, and termed it as an export-friendly step. They complained that the GST had been declared as non-refundable for the packaging material and it would increase the manufacturing cost, thus increasing the financial burden on industrialists and exporters. They demanded that the GST on packaging material must also be refunded to the industrialists to relieve them.

Like the Sindh government, the Punjab government was also proposing to levy 0.9 per cent infrastructure development tax on every export shipment, which would affect the exporters. They said that all the dry ports in the country were busy handling the export cargoes to earn valuable foreign exchange for the national exchequer, but the levying of 16 per cent sales tax per freight was quite ironic and anti-exports. They said that Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar had admitted that the national exports had suffered a considerable decline of $3.5 billion during the last fiscal year, which was quite alarming. They said that the government must take emergency steps to facilitate the industrialists-cum-exporters by freeing them from all unnecessary taxation to boost the dwindling exports and to save them from total collapse. They demanded allocation of sufficient funds for the urgent completion of the more than nine-year-old mega project of Sialkot-Lahore motorway.

Surgical Instruments Manufacturers Association of Pakistan (SIMAP) leader Jahangir Bajwa welcomed declaration of the surgical industry as zero rated regarding GST and hoped that it would help increase exports of surgical goods. He, however, expressed concern over the proposed imposition of many other taxes and feared that it would cause price hike, making the lives of middle and lower middle classes more hard and miserable.

Travel agency owner Arif Khawar Butt termed the decision of imposing Rs 3,000 tax on each economy class air ticket a cruel step as mostly the economy class air travelers belonged to the middle and lower middle class. He said that such tax should be imposed on the higher class air tickets.