‘15% GST to destroy Halal food export potential’

Stakeholders concerned over likely rise in chicken meat prices.

LAHORE:

The proposed levy of 15 per cent General Sales Tax (GST) on the poultry industry is likely to affect Pakistan’s chances of benefiting from the lucrative global Halal food market, said Poultry Association’s former chairman Abdul Basit. In a statement on Monday, Basit said that the international Halal food market was worth $1,200 billion and Pakistan was ideally placed to benefit from the market, but currently it had no share. “The levy of sales tax will destroy the industry in its infancy,” he added.

He said that the tax on the local poultry industry, worth Rs200 billion and providing jobs to 1.5 million people, would not only jack up the rate of unemployment but it would also turn the export potential into an import liability.

He said imposition of sales tax on poultry feed, which comprises more than 70 per cent of the cost, would result in a 100 per cent increase in the price of poultry meat, an alternative to red meat, providing a check on prices of mutton and beef.

He added that the levy of sales tax on the newly-launched poultry processing industry would wipe it off in its infancy. In Pakistan, currently only three per cent of poultry meat was processed, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2011.