- Finance minister grilled over huge reduction of duties on poultry
Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, who presented the fifth budget on Friday, claimed that his government will be making the 6th budget (2018-19) next year, as there is no legal hindrance in the announcement of budget a few weeks earlier before expiring tenure of the government.
While congratulating his party and government for presenting the 5th consecutive budget, Ishaq Dar, who was addressing post-budget press conference here on Saturday, said that interim government should not be given the chance of making budget in haste. “Hopefully we will be announcing the budget in 2018 before the end of the tenure,” he claimed to reject the question of the legal hindrance if any in this regard.
During the press conference, the minister faced repeated and firm queries regarding the huge reduction in duties on chicken products as the same may benefit the business of ruling Sharif Family. The minister announced a reduction of duty from 11 per cent to only three per cent, and removal of 5 per cent regularity duty on grandparent and parent stock of chicken. Besides, he announced, the duty on hatching of eggs from 11 per cent to 3 per cent was also relaxed in the next budget.
Though the finance minister kept insisting that the relaxation of duties in the poultry sector has nothing to do with politics, adding that the economy should be dealt separately; the media persons asked repeated queries on the same issue to know whether this new initiative is aimed at benefiting Hamza Shehbaz’s business.
The minister also tried to dodge question regarding neglecting strategically important road of Juglot-Skardu Road (at a cost of Rs 45 billion) in the second consecutive budget despite announcement and subsequent inauguration of the project by the prime minister in 2015, by saying that the mega project has been included in the fresh PSDP. As matter of the fact, the project is nowhere to be seen in the next budget’s books.
Dar, while referring to news published regarding hike in the price of milk following the budget announcements, said that there is no justification of an increase milk’s prices since nothing has been changed in the dairy sector. He asked the Ministry of Food Security and Research and provincial government to take an action against the profiteers.
In reply to a query regarding huge amount of sale tax refunds, the minister claimed that mechanism of automatic transfer of refunds to the exporters is being framed. “After the mechanism, no exporter is needed to visit the ministries with boxes of sweets for receiving cheques of tax refunds,” Dar said, adding that all the pending refunds, with RPOs sanctioned by April 30, 2017, would be paid in two parts. RPOs up to the value of Rs 1 million will be paid till July and remaining RPOs will be paid till August 14 this year.
To another question regarding an extra 10% Zarb-e-Azb allowance for armed personnel in Budget 2017-18, the finance minister requested media to avoid making it an issue since the special allowance has been announced by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif keeping in view the sacrifices of armed forces in the war on terror.
He said the government has also increased defence spending for the next financial year 2017-18 by Rs 60 billion to Rs 920 billion.
Dar also admitted the failure of government in reviving the corporate institutions including Pakistan Steel Mills, PIA, Railways and others, saying that people are well aware of the reaction faced by the government in its proposed privatisation moves.“ Those people [PPP] who announced to own and run PSM backfired after government’s quick acceptance of the offer,” he added.
The finance minister also spoke about plans to provide IT training to 1 million freelance youth. The minister stated that the government will continue to tighten its grip around non-filers of tax returns to bring them into the tax net.
