Daily Times

Islamabad: A delegation of the Pakistan Business Council (PBC) led by Ehsan Malik and Bashir Ali Mohammad met Finance Minister, Dr. Shamshad Akhtar here. The meeting was attended by secretaries of the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform, the Ministry of Energy and Chairperson Federal Board of Revenue and additional secretary of the Ministry of Commerce.

The CEO, PBC made a comprehensive presentation of the issues facing corporate sector and shared proposals on strengthening the overall business environment and steps that could help boost different sectors of the economy. Concern was expressed regarding the trend towards deindustrialization in the country as Pakistan industry lacked competitiveness given the high cost of power and gas and faces difficult business environment because of distortions in incentive framework and inconsistencies of policy regime. The PBC delegation advocated for provision of energy at competitive costs and addressing in a more holistic manner, the inefficiencies of DISCOs including their eventual privatization that have resulted in high cost of power to industry. At the same time PBC emphasized broadening of tax base, reduction in indirect taxes and cascading duty structure. The delegates called for reduction and simplification and reduction in the number of taxes through unification of multiple taxes and reduction in tax rates to strengthen taxcompliance. The delegation also laid emphasis on provision of level playing field with the informal sector, with focus on steps for ease of doing business that would ultimately revitalize growth of industry and thus generate jobs, exports and revenues for the national exchequer to invest in social development. The delegation observed that there was a need to effectively tap the potential in the country’s housing sector as it could help generate a large number ofjob opportunities annually. PBC called for establishment of a a High level Council including political leaderships as well as independent and corporate experts tasked to develop deeper structural reforms and achieve broader acceptability and consensus from various quarters concerned.

Finance Minister appreciated the proposals put forth by the delegation, saying these would be valuable for the future elected government and PBC should send their detail tax and other proposals to Government so work can be launched by relevant ministries for consideration of new Government. The Minister also stressed on lifting the quality standards of local products at par with international standards, saying this was necessary to discourage imports. The Minister agreed on the need for a more effective stakeholder consultation mechanism as it is critical that effective proposals offered get adopted and implemented by the Government. Pakistan industry needs to examine all options of managing their competitiveness and she agreed on need for dealing with root causes of the energy liabilities such as transmission and distribution losses that have aggravated the circular debt problem. She underscored private sector explores options for boosting exports and availing of opportunity offered by the establishment of Special Economic Zones. There was an agreement that in few areas PBC will send more detailed proposals, meanwhile the Secretaries will work towards taking up the suggested reforms with new Government.

Published in Daily Times, July 21^st 2018.