‘Govt will ensure accountability of taxes’

Dar visits Customs House for first official visit since 1999.

KARACHI: Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who was addressing the officials of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) in Karachi, said the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government was committed to transparency and accountability of each rupee collected as taxes and its utilisation for the welfare, progress and properity of Pakistan.

According to a press statement issued by the finance ministry, the meeting was attended Tariq Bajwa, chairman of the FBR besides senior officers of the FBR (south region) including chief commissioners, commissioners of Inland Revenue Service and chief collectors and collectors at the Customs House on Monday. This was Dar’s first official visit to the Customs House since June 1999.

The government, the finance minister said, aimed to increase the tax-to-gross domestic product ratio through reforms in the taxation system.

Dar agreed that the government needed to mobilise our resources to improve infrastructure and launch projects for economic prosperity.

Elaborating on the measures taken by the government to increase tax collection, the finance minister said the government had imposed withholding tax on retailers and distributors, minimum tax on builders and developers and was focusing on sectors that were out of the tax net, besides giving access to banking information to increase the number of taxpayers.

Dar said that the objective of taxation reforms introduced by the government included encouraging corporatisation of the economy for which several incentives like lower corporation taxes were announced in the budget.

Dar said the measures taken by the government had started bearing fruits. In July 2013, exports showed an increase of 9.28%, the current account was in a surplus of $46 million against a deficit of $426 million in the corresponding period of last year, record tax-collection of Rs134 billion and an all-time high remittances inflow of $1.4 billion.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 4^th,  2013.

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