STAFF REPORTER
ISLAMABAD Advisor to the Prime Minister on Finance and Revenue Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh on Thursday constituted a five-member committee for finalizing proposals for providing relief to retail sector in the wake of prevailing situation. The committee, which includes senior officials from Finance Division and Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) as its members, would hold meetings with representatives of the retail sector for finalization of the proposals, said a press statement issued by the Finance Ministry. The decision to set up the committee was taken by the Advisor while chairing a video conference, arranged at the Finance Division with the representatives and office-bearers of Retails Association of Pakistan to discuss the problems faced by the sector and their possible solutions. The Association representatives said that the retail sector was contributing 18 per cent to the GDP besides employing 16 per cent of the labour force. They said that due to prevailing circumstances, they were foreseeing negative growth in current year, hence it was imperative to provide relief, particularly in taxes, to the retail sector, especially the integrated sector. Shaikh said that the government was keen to help the retail sector and constituted a committee to further discuss and firm up proposals, put up by the representatives of Retails Association of Pakistan before the next meeting which would finalize the proposals. He directed the committee to follow a quick-action approach to decide the mechanism of support as the government intended to alleviate the hardships being faced by the various sectors of economy. Meanwhile, chairing a meeting-cumvideo conference arranged at the Finance Division with leading industrialists and businessmen of the country, PM’s Adviser Dr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh has said the government has vowed to resolve liquidity crunch, cash flow and other allied issues being faced by the industry and businesses and work in this direction has already started by releasing more than Rs115 billion of the sales tax and income tax refunds as well as duty drawbacks held up for years. Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh heard various proposals and suggestions from the businessmen to support and provide relief to the industries and assured the participants of the conference that the government would carefully and favourably study all the proposals and all the major issues faced by the industry and businesses would be resolved and a comprehensive relief package would be offered to the industry. He briefed the meeting that the government had released Rs 52 billion of the claimed Rs 57 billion to exporters through the Faster system and Rs 25 billion out of the Rs 52 billion sales tax refunds for other sectors and industries while the remaining would also be cleared within next one week. Similarly, the government had also cleared about Rs 30 billion tax refunds under the DLT, while Rs 15 billion duty drawbacks had also been paid.
