Minister of State and the chairman of the Reforms and Resource Mobilization Committee
Ashfaq Tola, stated on Monday that the crisis in foreign exchange reserves calls for a charter of the economy as soon as possible.
In a meeting with businessmen here at Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI),
he said that they had been talking about charter of economy for a long time. “This is our
dream that will soon be realized. All stakeholders should sit with ICAP; suggest solutions
and bring up the issues one by one and get them resolved,” he added.
He said that it would be a great favour to the country, if someone invests in solar energy.
At the moment, solar installation was being incentivized in America.
The State Minister said that major stakeholders, including the chambers of commerce,
should come up with a proposal for reforms and resource mobilization. All the chambers
should sit-together, draw up a charter of economy and a charter of budget.
He said, “We can host the stakeholders two days at FBR and the issues can be discussed
one by one with the FBR team.” He agreed that there should not be multiple audits. “We are
addressing this issue with the help of Reforms and Resource Mobilization Commission.”
He said that revenue collection and ease of doing business were two different things,
adding that there were issues of size and sales as far as Tier-1 was concerned.
Regarding amnesty, he said, the best amnesty could be a dollar amnesty.
He said that taxation of the traders was not an issue but the problem was agricultural tax.
He said, “We do not have an export surplus to increase exports. Our raw materials are
import based as we have converted our agricultural land into housing societies.”
The Minister said the wheat production was 1.7 million per hectare annually as compared
to five million tonnes in India. “Even we double our production today, we will produce 26 million
tons annually while our requirement is 36 million tons. We also export four to five million tons.
If our production is double from this, it will be 52 million tonnes annually. We have to increase
our productivity and need to work on local import substitutions,” he added.
Ashfaq Tola said that energy prices in Pakistan were extremely high, this
was because the electricity was generated from imported fuel.
