Rawalpindi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (RCCI) President Malik Shahid Saleem on Monday urged the government to adopt modern technology and strict monitoring at borders to curb smuggling, as it was denting the economy.
“By curbing the menace of smuggling, the country can increase its tax-to-GDP ratio by another 3.9pc to 15pc within a year,” he said while talking to a traders’ delegation at the Chamber House.
The RCCI president said there was a need to monitor the transportation system on borders. “Smuggling severely harms the economy of a country in multidimensional ways. It damages the local industry, discourages legal imports and reduces the volume of revenues collected from duties and levies by the government,” he maintained.
Saleem stated that monitoring of shops by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) staff in order to curb smuggling would only create doubts among the business community.
