KARACHI: Hosiery manufacturers and exporters on Monday raised concerns over delay in some payments under the FBR’s Fully Automated Sales Tax e-Refund System (FASTER) without any substantive reason, urging the government to expedite the process.
However, they hailed the government for its overall speedy payments to the exporters’ ST refund claims [within 72 hours].
Pakistan Hosiery Manufacturers & Exporters Association (PHMA) Vice Chairman Shafiq Butt said that a mechanism should be finalized to find out the reasons behind deferring up to 25 per cent payment of exporters’ refunds under FASTER.
“The automated refund system should point out the reason as to why it’s not making full payments and deferring 10pc to 25pc payment of exporters while their documents are complete.”
The vice-chairman maintained that the partial payments by Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) against the ST refund claims have baffled the exporters. He urged the FBR to equip FASTER with the required software so that the reasons behind the rejection of exporters’ documents could be identified.
He said the country has achieved current account surplus and now it needed an industrialization policy to achieve trade surplus.
Butt was of the view that the exporters were unable to procure and purchase raw materials and other accessories to fulfil their future export orders.
He added that record inflation has hit the purchasing power of the common man due to which business activities have reduced significantly.
The PHMA office-bearer urged the government to reduce prices of fuel, electricity as well as gas, besides cutting key policy interest rate to a single digit so as to facilitate the exporters.
