Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar has said that a team of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) will hold two-day parleys with Swiss authorities on the Swiss bank accounts of Pakistani nationals in Bern from June 23.

“The government has directed the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), the Securities Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to draft laws to avoid Panamagate-like situations in future,” the minister said. “The government will follow tax evaders and investors who siphoned off their money abroad, in any case,” he added.

Dar said this while explaining the salient features of the budget 2016-17 at a news conference in Islamabad on Saturday. He expressed the confidence that the new measures announced in the budget would give a boost to the agriculture sector and help it contribute its share to the GDP. These measures include a significant reduction in the prices of fertilisers. He said that prices of the urea fertiliser were brought down by Rs 250 per bag recently. He said that urea prices would be brought down further, Rs 400 per bag, in the coming month. He said the prices of the DAP fertiliser would be reduced by Rs 300 per bag from next month. The minister said that 7 percent duty on pesticides had been withdrawn and off-peak rate of electricity tariff for agricultural tube wells had been lowered from Rs 8.85 per unit to Rs 5.35 per unit.

Dar said the thrust of the new federal budget was on growth, job creation, poverty alleviation and improving the life of the ordinary man. He pointed out that the agriculture sector posted negative growth this year. Keeping this in view, he said, the prime minister announced incentives a few months back and they would continue next year.

The minister said that another area of concern were exports, which declined by 11% this year. The government, he said, wanted to enhance the export to GDP ratio to 15 percent. For this, he said, the exports would have to be increased to $ 35 billion per annum. He said that five export sectors had been zero-rated and refunds up to April 30, 2016 would be cleared by August 31, 2016. He said that export refinancing had been reduced to 3 percent to facilitate exporters.

The finance minister said, with a view to give a boost to industrial growth, the government had subjected import of machinery and raw material to 3% duty, which was the lowest slab in the country. Similarly, he said, more credit was being made available for the private sector. He said that every effort was made in the budget to save filers from additional burden of taxes. He acknowledged that taxes on some of the items would affect people. About the increase in tax on mobile phone sets, he said that costly phones were being declared as low category phones. He said that tax had been enhanced to compensate for this leakage.

He said that all SROs had been withdrawn except for those genuinely needed, with a cumulative impact of Rs 400 billion. Referring to Rs 1,675 billion overall development programme, he said this would stimulate economy and create jobs.

The minister said the government was taking steps to keep inflation to single digit and alleviate poverty. He said that allocations for the BISP had been increased to bring more families under its coverage. He said that despite constraints defence allocations had been increased. He said the Operation Zarb-e-Azb was moving towards its final phase and its successful conclusion would help attract foreign direct investment. He said the country suffered losses of $ 118 billion during the war on terror.