Chairman appointed

Nazar Hussain Mehar has been appointed chairman of the recently established Sindh Revenue Board.

KARACHI: Nazar Hussain Mehar, former additional chief secretary of Sindh, has been appointed chairman of the recently established Sindh Revenue Board (SRB), according to Dr Kaiser Bengali, the economic adviser to the Sindh chief minister.

Mumtaz Sheikh and Jamil Akhtar Khan are the other two permanent members of the board while another two temporary members will be appointed soon.

The board, instituted by the Sindh Assembly on June 3, will be responsible for the administration, management, imposition and collection of taxes and duties in the province from November 1. With a total staff of 90, the SRB aims to utilise automated systems for collection and assessment of taxes. By comparison, the Federal Board of Revenue has over 30,000 employees on its payroll.

While the province had estimated Rs25 billion revenue from the collection of Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) on services in its 2010-11 budget, the delay in its imposition and the floods would cause a reduction in the target, added Bengali.

However, with the province in charge of collecting the RGST on services itself, Bengali expects the SRB to double the revenue that Sindh will collect under this head, compared to what it received from the centre in the past.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 12^th, 2010.