LAHORE, Dec 18: Minister of State for Economic Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar has said that the government is in a position to take a consensus decision and resolve the differences between the provinces on National Finance Commission (NFC) Award.

“The government is committed to take along every province on the NFC issue and resolve it amicably,” she told a conference on Tax Policy Options for Pakistan on Thursday. She said resource distribution under the NFC had generated controversies in the past, but was hopeful that the government would be able to settle these issues.

Talking to the media she said the government was working to abandon the concurrent list as was committed by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Talking about food prices she said the government was considering taking administrative measures to bring the prices of edible oil down.

She said the government had not enough money to meet its expenses and needed to increase revenue generation. She urged the need to evolve a tax system in which all provinces and entities of the state worked together. She said tax reforms and infrastructure development were crucial to improve the tax base.

Later, Shaukat Tarin, the prime minister’s adviser on finance, told the final session of the conference that Pakistan needed to reform tax administration to make it broad-based, equitable, simpler and transparent. “We need to develop a broad-based tax system administrated properly. It should be devised in a manner in which each and every Pakistani shares the burden instead of some people, who ultimately find ways of evading taxes,” he said.

Acknowledging that the revenue target fixed for the current fiscal year was tough, he pointed out that there were many people who were not paying taxes. “If the tax department could tap only 10 to 20 per cent of them, there should be no difficulty in meeting the target,” he suggested.

Mr Tarin said Pakistan had to move in the direction in which most developing and developed countries had already moved. “All of us have to pay taxes,” he added.

He said the FBR should make efforts to collect greater revenue and the government was ready to share a part of the collection for spending on the administration of the department or for improving compensation for its officers showing outstanding performance.