LAHORE: Punjab Minister for Finance Ayesha Ghous Pasha has said that almost 97 percent of taxes in the province are being received through e-payments.
She was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) developed online Business Registration Portal at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industries.
The portal is developed for the Punjab Planning and Development Department in collaboration with Industries Department to provide online solution to execute all business processes in a user-friendly environment and to improve productivity to conduct business registration activities efficiently and in a timely manner.
The Finance Minister said that the Punjab government was determined to make Pakistan a developed country by enhancing the growth rate by improving the security and energy conditions for creating conducive environment for the private sector through providing them ease of doing business by integrating more departments in the portal. The economic growth depends on the progress of private sector, which provided employment and better delivery of services to the common meanwhile consultations have been initiated with the private sector for the upcoming budget, she added.
Sheikh Allauddin Provincial Minister for industries said that the new industrial policy was in the final stage and would be announced soon.
The Chairman PITB Dr. Umar Saif in his address said that all large functions of the Punjab have been digitalized during the last five years, which include police, health, education, eStamping, e-Ticketing, subsidies on various services, transfer of property, providing various services through e-Khidmat Centers under one roof within stipulated time frame, vehicle registration, providing Fard, support in case of loss of crops, floods as the Punjab government has renewed focus on improving business environment enabling energy deficit to disappear by automating all departments.
In his opening remarks Chairman Planning and Development department Punjab Jahanzeb Khan the task of ease of doing business has a wide range of activities to improve performance on key doing business indicators dealing with construction permit and enforcing contracts by facilitating to register Partnership Firm with Industries, Shops and establishments with Labour and any Business with Punjab Employee Social Security Institution(PESSI) by using the Business Registration Portal from anywhere 24/7 with back office integration with NADRA and SECP. A helpline has also been made functional (042-111-425-725) in this regard while presently the portal would be available for Lahore District to be extended subsequently to all other districts of the Punjab Province, he added.
LCCI President Malik Tahir Javaid said in his welcome address that we firmly believed in public private partnership and the integrated system would ensure ease of doing business and would also improve the international ranking and hoped that the portal would set the right momentum while revenue authority was also needed to be included in the portal.
Published in Daily Times, February 1st 2018.