Daily Times

Sukkur: The World Bank (WB) has provided funds to the Sindh government to conduct a property survey of industrial, commercial, and residential units of Sukkur in first lag.

In a meeting held in London, officials of Financial and Excise and Taxation departments of the Sindh government were assured of this.

WB has also promised to give financial assistance for the initiation of an identical survey in Karachi, Hyderabad, Mirpurkhas, Larkana and Khairpur, and Benazirabad.

Sindh government officials have stated that a team of WB experts would visit Pakistan in a couple of months to finalise the modalities in this regard. Shoaib Siddiqui, Director of Excise and Taxation affirmed that a Punjab based company has been contacted to draw up the agreement to initiate the Sukkur survey project.

Officials from the Sindh government financial department have said that after completion of the terms and conditions with the company, the accord will be sent to the Sindh Law department to give it legal weight. Thereafter, the company will begin the survey process in Sukkur.

“We are confident that an agreement with the company will be finalised shortly”. This practice will hopefully bring documentation of all units in Sukkur which will help to ascertain the scale of the new taxation rate and additionally, government will be able to generate more revenue on property tax, he maintained.

According to existing data, the number of property units in Karachi are 815,438, followed by 132,859 in Hyderabad, 1, 73,782 in Larkana, and 81,767 property units in Sukkur.

It has been decided that all categories of properties in Sukkur will be surveyed in the first phase.

He added that the government will be able to increase its tax revenue by up to 50 percent or 60 percent if the survey of these cities in Sindh is completed. Chief Minister for Sindh, Murad Ali Shah, during his stint as Finance Minister held talks with WB officials on this issue and the bank assured his government of their financial assistance in this respect. The Secretary of Excise and Taxation said that the last property survey in Sindh was conducted in 2001 and therefore, a fresh survey should be conducted to bring more units into the property tax net.