Government extends chief taxman’s contract

FBR chairman Javed to hold office till end of June.

ISLAMABAD: The government has given an extension to chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Ansar Javed till end of June in a bid to not disrupt the budget making exercise.

Ansar Javed, who was appointed as the taxman on April 10, was due to retire today (Wednesday). The spokesperson of the FBR Riffat Shaheen Qazi confirmed that Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso extended Javed’s contract till June 30. She said the Establishment Division will soon issue a notification to this effect following the approval granted by the premier.

It was the first extension given by the caretaker PM after the May 11 elections and few days before Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N is poised to make a government in the centre. It was not immediately clear whether the caretaker government consulted the PML-N leadership before giving an extension to the chairman FBR.



The government had appointed Javed as chairman of the FBR in place of Ali Arshad Hakeem who had been suspended by the Islamabad High Court after finding flaws in the procedure adopted by the previous government for his appointment. The IHC, on Monday, reserved a judgment on the review plea filed by the suspended chairman FBR Hakeem.

The budget exercise may be completed smoothly after the extension but questions remain over the ownership of the decisions that Javed takes as the chairman FBR. There have been incidences in the past where every new chairman scrapped the policy of his predecessor and implemented his own, creating chaos in the FBR machinery, according to the FBR officials.

Since his appointment, Javed has been making transfers and postings at a time when the FBR machinery should be concentrating fully on fine tuning the budget proposals, they added. In the past, there used to be a ban on making transfers and postings during the budget making exercise.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 15^th, 2013.

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