Daily Times

Representatives of the business community said at a pre-budget seminar that the government should take the business community into confidence while making major decisions on taxation and regulations to ensure economic growth, especially promotion of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the country.

The seminar was held with Small and Medium Enterprises Development Authority (SMEDA) Chief Executive Officer Farhan Aziz Khawaja in the chair, here on Monday. Various business leaders including Adnan Jalil, KP Minister Industries, Muhammad Haroon, a senior office-bearer of Peshawar chamber, Amjad Siddiquie, vice president Quetta chamber, Hamid Ateeq Sarwar, former federal additional secretary and Mehmood Khalid, senior economist of Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), addressed the seminar. Ms Nadia Jehangir Seth, GM Policy Planning and Ms Maryam Anas Ganaei, manager SMEDA, conducted the seminar as hosts.

Farhan Khawaja urged the participants to identify crucial issues facing the SME sector in the prevailing economic crisis. He said, “We should focus our attention to find out solutions to problems.” He suggested to consider the examples of Egypt and Sri Lanka, who had adopted viable measures to come out of the crisis similar to be faced by Pakistan at present. He assured that recommendations given by the participants at the session would be taken up with policy-makers in Islamabad.

The CEO said that a meeting of the business community leaders in this context would also be arranged with federal Minister for Industries and Production. The business community representatives expressed a common viewpoint that high mark-up rate, augmenting prices of energy and burden of multiple taxes at provincial and federal level had squeezed the margins of growth for industry.

They appreciated that SMEDA was acting as voice of SMEs in the policy making corridors. They said that government should take the business community into confidence while making major decisions on taxation and regulations. Muhammad Harpoon regretted that tax concessions committed with FATA business community to promote SMEs, had not been implemented. He suggested to utilise 2,080-kilometre Afghan border linked with FATA for promoting bilateral trade between SMEs of the two countries.

Amjad Siddiqui suggested to make a strategy to explore plenty of the previous mineral resources available in Balochistan. He said that 42 registered minerals including gold, coal and manganese could change the economic fate of Pakistan if utilised with the support of modern technology. He also urged to promote agriculture and livestock sector in Balochistan through modern techniques.

Mehmood Khalid, in his concluding remarks, made a number of forecasts about the incoming fiscal budget. He suspected that future budget would bring a big cut in PSDP account and a huge increase in taxes. He suggested that instead of increasing tax rate, measures should be taken to expand tax base. He said that a research had revealed that 45 lines out of 88 lines of Withholding Tax had made less than one percent contribution in the tax-net. So, these 45 lines should be removed from the list the Withholding Tax, he suggested and made the similar opinion about the distinction rule of Filers and Non-Filers. He observed that such distinction had created distortion in the taxation system and recommended to abolish this distinction in the coming budget.