Islamabad Chamber of Commerce calls for settling trade licence issue

consensus needed on trade license fee and signboard tax with business community

ISLAMABAD: Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) on Friday urged the municipal authorities to reach a consensus on trade license fee and signboard tax with business community.

The business community of Islamabad is playing important role in the development of the local economy and Islamabad Metropolitan Corporation (IMC) would take measures to resolve issues of trade and industry on priority.

This was observed by Islamabad Mayor Anser Aziz while talking to a delegation of Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) that called on him in his office led by its President Ahmed Hassan Moughal.

Aziz said 50 per cent of the street lights in Islamabad were in working condition and the remaining would also be restored soon.

He said the sanitation work was assigned to contractors and it would be further improved to ensure proper sanitation and cleaning in the federal capital.

He said if any market association wanted to develop car parking or install filtration plan in market on self-finance basis, the MCI would allow them to do such works.

He instructed director Municipal Administration and director Sanitation to visit ICCI to know about the problems of business community.

Speaking on the occasion, ICCI President Moughal said the issues of trade license and signboard tax have not been resolved for the last many years due to which traders were facing problems and IMC was losing revenue.

He said last year, a consensus was developed on Rs60 per square yard as signboard tax rate, but IMC did not implement it.  He stressed that the IMC should seek mutually acceptable solutions of trade license andsignboard tax issues to settle these matters with consensus.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2018.