Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The government on Monday announced Rs 40 billion additional tax measures to meet the revenue shortfall during first quarter of the current fiscal year.

The decision in this regard was taken in the meeting of Economic Coordination Committee of the Cabinet (ECC), which met here under the chairmanship of Minister for Finance Ishaq Dar. Later briefing the newsmen, the finance minister said the government had decided to levy five to 10 percent regulatory duty on those 61 items which were exempted from the duty before.

He said the government had also decided to increase the regulatory duty on 289 items from existing 10 percent to 15 percent.

“The third decision in this regard was to impose one percent additional duty on various imported items,” the minister added.

Dar explained that those items and sectors which have been exempted from levy of one percent proposed additional customs duty included: all non-dutiable imports, agriculture machinery, raw materials for local industry (25 sectors), artificial leather industry, pesticides industry, sugar mills, fan industry, electric motors, import of fertilizers, seeds, spores of sowing, plant and machinery for manufacturing of goods, used vehicles under SRO 577(I)/2005, import of goods on which regulatory duty is already levied under SRO 568(I)/2014 and telecom sector.

Dar said the government had also levied 10 percent additional regulatory duty on above 1000 cc imported and used vehicles while the vehicles below 1000 cc would be exempted from the additional duty. On the occasion, he also clarified that no additional tax was being introduced for the locally manufactured vehicles therefore the manufacturers must not increase their products’ prices.

He said the government had also decided to impose additional federal excise duty (FED) at Rs 125 per 1000 high tar locally produced cigarettes while Rs 100 per 1000 low tar locally produced cigarettes.

The minister said that through regulatory duty on 61 items, the government would collect Rs 4.5 billion, while with five percent additional duty on 289 items Rs 4.5 billion would be generated during the current fiscal year.

“An amount of Rs 21 billion would also be generated through introducing one percent additional customs duty whereas Rs 6.5 would be collected through additional FED on cigarettes,” he said adding the additional regulatory duty on old and used vehicles, an amount of Rs 2.5 billion would be generated.