KARACHI: President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum (PBIF), President All Karachi Industrial Alliance (AKIA), Senior Vice Chairman of the Businessmen Panel of FPCCI and former provincial minister, Mian Zahid Hussain has said that the business community is concerned over massive revenue shortfall and increasing debt burden.
Talking to the business community here on Monday, the veteran business leader said that the government can bridge the revenue gap through a mini-budget or rationalize the import tariff to boost economic activities which will generate revenue.
Despite the best efforts of FBR, the revenue shortfall for seven months has jumped to Rs387 billion while the shortfall for January was Rs104billion, he added.
Mian Zahid said that revenue cannot be enhanced in an unfavourable environment while highhandedness of the tax collectors takes a toll on the investment climate and lead to street protests.
He noted that mini-budget will be counterproductive as masses cannot endure more burden while the business community cannot help the government bridge the shortfall.
Therefore, the President PBIF said, the import regime should be relaxed to improve economic activities which will help generate additional revenue and jobs.
He said that the experiment of unnecessary compression in imports has failed as import reduction to the tune of one billion dollars results in revenue loss of Rs56 billion while losses of the business community and masses exceed it.
Depressing imports has left many businesses bankrupt, people jobless and banks with infected loans, therefore, it is time to liberalize imports to some extent, he added. –Agencies
