Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The National Assembly Standing committee on Finance and Revenue Tuesday directed Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) to expedite payment of tax refunds to export oriented industrial sector besides settling down all other demands of the business community.
The committee which held its meeting here with Faiz Ullah in the chair, said that both the business community and FBR should sit together to resolve their issues and asked the representatives of business community to report the committee on February 12 about their level of satisfaction.
Pakistan Textile Export Association (PTEA) Chairman Khurram Mukhtar said that due to late payment of tax refunds, the industrialists were facing severe liquidity issue resulting in slowing down of production process. He said in the wake of corona virus in China, the people from across the world were hesitating to travel to China and they were now turning to Pakistan to fetch orders from the textile sector.
However, he feared, this opportunity could be lost due to the fact that without liquidity the industrialists could not be able to secure additional orders. FBR Acting Chairperson Nousheen Javed Amjad informed the meeting that the board was actively engaged in timely payment of all refunds. However, she said, a major portion of refunds claim got rejected due to fake claims or due to wrongly filed returns.
She said since the refund system was running completely on automated system and no manual system was involved, the system does not accept the claims which have some flaws or technical fault.
FBR member policy Dr Hamid Attique said during the current fiscal year, the FBR had so far paid refunds of Rs 62 billion to the export oriented sector. He said that while claiming refunds,normally the people made mistakes which result in rejection by the automated system.
President Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry Rana Sikandar Azam said that after a lengthy struggle, the business community managed to convince the government to bring the export sector under zero rated, but the present government had reversed the decision which was affecting the business community.
