LAHORE, Aug 26: Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday said the government was thinking of giving some incentives to the ship-breaking industry to develop steel industry in the country.
Answering questions from reporters during a visit to the Medium Taxpayers Unit (MTU), he said steel prices had sharply increased over the last few months due to a greater construction activity in the country that pushed up the demand as well as due to an increase in their international prices.
However, he was hopeful that the steel prices would also come down and stabilize after some time. He said the yet-to-be announced incentives for the ship-breaking industry would also help stabilize the steel prices in future.
He said the Ministry of Industries and Production was in touch with the cement manufacturers to make them slash their prices so that the benefit of 25 per cent reduction in the excise duty could be passed on to the consumers.
The finance minister said the demand of cement as well as the capacity utilization of the factories had increased in the recent months. Besides, the impact of cement export to Afghanistan would also be started to be felt in the coming months as reconstruction of the war-ravaged country begins. So, he said, the scenario was set for a reduction in the cement prices in the coming days.
FDI: Mr Shaukat said the foreign direct investment in the country had increased by 65 per cent during the last fiscal year to $800 million over the previous year. It also included $200 million received by the government from the privatization of UBL. But he did not look satisfied with the volume of FDI that came to the country last year, saying it should have been much, much higher.
However, the minister said the government had brought economic stability in the country through its consistent policies and was now moving to achieve a higher growth rate (with GDP target of 5.3 for the current year as compared to last year’s 5.1 per cent). Other government policies would surely encourage greater FDI this year and in the coming years. He also noted that some foreign companies were also expanding their businesses in the country. No investor, he said, could risk losing the market share when GDP was growing at a rate of over five per cent, he said.
MTUs: The minister said the Central Board of Revenue would increase the number of MTUs to five by the end of June 2004. The new MTUs would be set up in Quetta, Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Karachi.
The CBR has already set up a Large Taxpayers Unit (LTU) in Karachi. With the establishment of another four MTUs, the number of tax filers covered by the modern system would increase to 25 per cent of the entire tax base in the country. He said the new units would provide quality services to the taxpayers.
Mr Shaukat said the idea behind setting up these modern units was to prepare the CBR for a paradigm shift. He also spoke about the tax reforms, changes in the tax laws as well as measures taken by the government to improve the performance and efficiency of the CBR. He, however, said the government would broaden the number of taxpayers to three million by 2006 from the existing 2.1 million.
