LAHORE: The National Transmission and Despatch Company (NTDC) is on the verge of default as it halted all payments to its contractors, vendors and consultants.
Also, NTDC has also terminated routine payments to its pensioners and employees, said a senior official declining to be named, reported Dawn.
The financial crisis afflicting NTDC could cause it to default as it has failed to pay its monthly instalments and markup against the loans procured from financial institutions, shared the official.
The crunch worsened for NTDC after Federal Board of Revenue at start of March blocked all bank accounts due to its inability to pay withholding tax of roughly Rs1.26 billion outstanding since 2009-10.
The official stated the NTDC had been rendered ineffective since the tax watchdog had frozen all its bank accounts and the little cash available with it was on the verge of finishing due to routine office expenditures.
He added NTDC had never faced such volatility since its formation in 1998 as it is presently facing and is moving towards collapse.
The official cited there were in a panic-stricken mode as pensioners were calling relevant officials regularly regarding pension disbursements. He shared the vendors, contractors and others were also demanding release of their payments.
NTDC which employees over 10,000 people in its head-office and various field-formations across Pakistan had brought this issue to notice of Power Division, which then reached out to FBR.
But the effort remained fruitless, as FBR refused to budge and unfreeze the bank accounts of NTDC.
Due to this, all NTDC operations linked to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) had grounded to a halt since March 7th.
NTDC claimed it has paid around Rs50 million in tax for year 2009-10, but FBR has outright rebuffed the manual method of tax payment by the company.
Also, the company stated its inability to declare this transaction in its tax returns because of non-availability of the electronic payment system in 2010.
