PM Shahbaz Sharif says Track & Trace is nothing but a cruel joke

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif of Pakistan declared the Track & Trace system, a digital monitoring system to curb tax evasion, a complete fraud to the nation and the economy.

The Track & Trace system, a digital monitoring initiative implemented in 2019 to combat tax evasion, was initially introduced in the cigarette industry and later expanded to other sectors such as fertilizers and sugar.

However, during a cabinet meeting, Sharif expressed his disappointment with the system's performance, stating that it failed to deliver the expected benefits.

"The system was nothing but a cruel joke on the nation," Sharif said, adding that the agreement for the Track & Trace system was made in 2019, but the implementation was severely flawed.

He added that the Track & Trace system could have generated billions in revenue for the country, but it was utterly mismanaged.

It is pertinent to mention that due to the lack of efforts to curb tax evasion and crack down on illegal manufacturers, tax evasion in the cigarette sector alone has reached 63%, causing the economy a loss of Rs 310 billion, according to some estimates.

Fawad Khan spokesperson of Mustehkam Pakistan, an advocacy firm for curbing illicit trade and tax evasion, while expressing his views on the track & trace system, said that the government needs to identify the black sheep in the system who are not fulfilling their duties properly and take legal action against them. Their failure and misconduct have cost the nation billions of rupees that could have been invested in projects for human development, he added.