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MULTAN, Sept 20: State Minister for Food, Agriculture and Livestock Sikandar Hayat Bosan has said that the government will not fall prey to blackmail while dealing with sugar-mill owners.
Speaking at a hurriedly-convened press conference here on Saturday evening, the minister said that the millers were threatening to delay the crushing season by two months or more, but the government would not succumb to such pressure tactics.
He urged the millers to come to the negotiation table and initiate a dialogue with all the stakeholders to resolve all controversial matters. He said that uncertainty on the sugar front would increase its price in the retail market, affecting a majority of the population.
On the cotton front, he said prices of the commodity were on the higher side this year, and the government would also ensure international prices for domestic growers.
He said that importers of pesticides had been asked to airlift the farm chemicals needed at this stage of cotton crop, which were now missing from the market. He said the agriculture department and some growers had been directed to raid the warehouses where the required pesticides were being hoarded for exorbitant profits.
STRIKE: The Pakistan Traders Alliance has called off its Tuesday’s shutterdown strike against new income tax and sales tax laws.
Addressing a press conference here on Saturday, PTA chairman Khwaja Muhammad Shafiq claimed that the Central Board of Revenue had accepted their all demands and, therefore, there was no need to go on strike.
He said after the successful negotiations with the CBR authorities the alliance had managed to bring out 90 per cent of the traders from the audit and scrutiny net. “Now the tax officials could scrutinise the registers of only those traders who would have an income above Rs 0.25m per annum.”
He said even if a trader having an annual income of Rs0.25m or less fell in the scrutiny net through computer balloting, he would not be bound to show his books. Moreover, he said, the income tax commissioners could not reopen a decided case without citing solid reasons.
He, however, warned that traders from all over the country would give a sit-in call near Jhelum on GT Road if the government did not ensure arrest of DSP Tahir Nawaz Warriach and his accomplices for torturing to death a trader of Jhelum.
