February 8, 2002	Friday	Ziqa’ad 24, 1422

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ISLAMABAD, Feb 7: Wapda chairman Lt-Gen Zulfikar Ali Khan on Thursday urged the government to refrain from charging 15 per cent General Sales Tax on electricity consumption and “be sensitive to public problems”.

Talking to reporters at a prize distribution ceremony of Pakistan Green Task Force, he conceded that if the GST was imposed on Wapda, the brunt would obviously be passed on to consumers in the shape of increased tariff.

“No where in the world, taxes are collected through utilities,” the chairman said, recalling that during the last fiscal year the department had collected Rs24 billion in taxes for the Central Board of Revenue out of which Rs3 billion alone was withholding tax. The amount so collected by Wapda was 25pc of the total collection of the CBR, he added.

He said the governor of State Bank had recently announced that 15pc GST would be imposed on the domestic electricity consumers. “If it is charged, then the prices would definitely go high by 15pc,” he said.

People, he emphasized, should understand that the CBR and not Wapda was responsible for this increase of the electricity tariff.

The chairman referred to a meeting held in November at which President Pervez Musharraf had empowered the finance ministry to deduct Wapda’s dues from the provinces at source. In line with this decision, the chairman said, he had a meeting with the finance minister on Wednesday requesting him to implement the decision soon. Sindh has already assured that it would pay back Rs1.1 billion but Wapda is facing difficulty in collecting the dues from areas like FATA, Balochistan, Azad Kashmir, federal government, the defence sector and the KESC.