The Pakistan Economy Watch (PEW) Sunday praised Finance Minister Ishaq Dar for taking steps to regulate the real estate market which will help government raise billions of rupees and increase the size of documented economy.
The decision is being resisted by the majority of business community which amounts to help tax cheats as it will convert a good part of the informal economy to the formal one which is in the larger national interest, it said.
The Pakistan’s real estate sector has become a save heaven for the corrupt, said PEW President Dr Murtaza Mughal, adding that formal economy is shrinking since decades while the informal economy has been expanding over time and now it is bigger than the formal one. Dr Murtaza Mughal said that the decision of the finance minister would increase the tax-to-GDP ratio which is one of the lowest in the world pushing government to beg for the survival.
A study estimated that the underground economy was 54.6 per cent to 62.8 per cent of the GDP and expanding at the rate of nine per cent a year. Dr Murtaza Mughal called for an end to the culture of amnesty schemes as each amnesty is declared to be the last, but the count keeps on growing.
