Taxes imposed on import of luxury items not to affect common man: Dar

ISLAMABAD:(APS)Dec 7,2015-Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has said recent taxes have been imposed on import of luxury and non-essential items and therefore would not affect the common man.

Giving a policy statement in the National Assembly this evening, he said recent revenue generation measures have been announced strictly under various acts of Parliament to bridge forty billion rupee shortfall in revenue targets.

The Minister said five to ten percent duty has been imposed on 61 non-essential and luxury items while regulatory duty on 289 items has been enhanced by five percent. One percent additional regulatory duty has been imposed across the board but here again essential items and those required for developmental purposes have been exempted.

He said provinces would be the main beneficiaries of the increased revenue collection which get 57.5 percent share of the federal divisible pool while the federal government gets only 42.5 percent. He said in addition, the federal government provides special one percent share to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government on account of war on terror, grant to Sindh to compensate for abolition of octroi and special grant to Balochistan.

Ishaq Dar urged political parties not to politicize economic issues as increase in revenue generation was necessary to take the country forward.

He expressed the confidence that the government would achieve tax collection targets for the current quarter and already October witnessed 22 percent growth and November 28 percent in tax collection.

The Finance Minister said government was compelled to go to the IMF to repay the debt taken by the previous governments.

He said substantial IMF repayments were due during the last two years and the government also paid one billion dollar from its own sources.

He said budget deficit which was 8.8 percent when the PPP government left has come down to 5.3 percent and this year it would further reduce to 4.3 percent.

Finance Minister said objective of the ordinance regarding PIA was to turn it into a corporate entity so that it operates in an autonomous manner.

He said the ordinance was not aimed at privatization of PIA as is being propagated.