According to the Advisor to Abdul Razak Dawood, the Prime Minister of Commerce and Investment, the regulatory and additional duties on raw materials that are not manufactured locally will soon be abolished.
While speaking recently with a delegation from the LCCI-Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he said that the customs duty applicable to these inputs would be reduced or eliminated by the government as an effort to make Pakistani goods more competitive worldwide.
He also claimed that the banking agreements with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan are in progress and that trade with these two countries will definitely be regularized as soon as these agreements come into force.
Dawood, meanwhile, added that councils were also being set up to increase exports of mango, kinnow, potato, dates, and leather. The advisor expressed hope that these movements would have phenomenal outcomes for our country’s entire economy. He also addressed the government’s goal of stabilizing Pakistan’s economy and the efforts being made to achieve the main objective.
The President of LCCI, Mian Tariq Misbah, said on the occasion that there is a sharp rise in the trade deficit that is needed to get the government’s urgent attention.
Our trade deficit, however, stood at over $12.36 billion during the months from July to December in the previous year of 2020, which is similar to the 6 percent higher that was $11.67 billion recorded during the months of July to December of the year 2019.
In particular, he added, the process of releasing refunds to exporters needs to be streamlined. In addition, it claimed that there was a technical error in this reimbursement scheme which resulted in the incorrect disbursement of these reimbursement amounts, while erroneous additional notices had already been given to the members of that business group, in which false cases were also registered against them just to make them guilty.
He also made a request to the adviser to play an important supporting role in this matter in order not to cause the business community to be victimized in the wrong way.
It was also reported that the Government of Pakistan should also concentrate on and manage the technical problems that emerged in the e-refund sales tax system in order to ensure that all exporters obtain these refunds easily and transparently.
Maybe it was suggested that, in order to increase Pakistan’s exports and to be competitive across a range of sectors, measures should be taken as the incentives given to all of the key export-oriented sectors should also be expanded or applied to other sectors, including the pharmaceutical, halal meat, rice and engineering sectors, as well as other food products. He also added that he had a modern, faster scheme.
