LAHORE, May 8: The Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has proposed that tax registration of all the businesses and education up to matriculation be made compulsory for high quality vocational training.

The proposals forwarded to the government for the 2007-2008 federal budget by LCCI President Shahid Hasan Sheikh read that sales tax registration of all the businessmen was necessary.

Although the sales tax registration had been simplified but the number of businessmen registered under the scheme was very small. The proposal stated the traders’ fears concerning registration should be removed and the maximum duration of registration process be reduced to one week. The tax rate also requires to be reduced to encourage registration and reduce prices of consumer goods.

The chamber president said that the measures by the government had resulted in more than 100 percent increase in the contribution of businessmen to revenue collection.

He demanded the government reduce the rate of taxes and phase out the withholding tax gradually.

The chamber stressed the need to make education up to matriculation compulsory because Pakistan was far behind other developing countries in the education sector despite allocation of huge funds for the promotion of education.

The proposals called rapid population increase one of the major problems making it difficult to control poverty, unemployment and inflation and stressed the need to pay serious attention to it pointing out the government had failed to contain it at the desired level despite allocation of substantial funds for the purpose.

The chamber asked the government to follow the policy of Bangladesh and not only involve the religious people in the population control drive but also raise awareness about its importance among the public.

The chamber described the sector development targets fixed by the government commendable but pointed out that it would be difficult to achieve the same because there had been no increase in power production.