ISLAMABAD: All members of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance, irrespective of their party affiliation, on Thursday blamed the Federal Board of Revenue for country’s falling exports and suggested authorities to learn from the Bangladesh model.

The opinion was shared by representatives of various chambers of commerce of industries in Pakistan who were present at the meeting.

Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Finance, Qaiser Ahmed Sheikh had invited key chambers and business associations to give their suggestions ahead of the federal budget.

Almost all speakers criticised the FBR for failing to facilitate the business community and being unable execute its responsibilities.

“When we were giving invitation to the business community to come to the committee meeting, almost everybody including certain big names asked me to get their refunds cleared from the FBR,” Mr Sheikh said.

Chairman FBR Dr Muhammad Irshad said that only Rs50 billion amount of tax refunds were pending. However, his statement was interrupted by President FPCCI Zubair Tufail who said that the refund amount was more than Rs150bn.

“Some refunds have been pending for more than two years and usually many cases get cleared after paying commission to the FBR officials,” he added.

Meanwhile, KCCI’s Haroon Farooki, a former business community leader, called upon PML-N MNA Mian Abdul Mannan, an old comrade of his, to extend help to the business community.

“While the refund issue of the business community remains unresolved, the government was extending Rs180bn package to Aptma. However that too remained fruitless,” he said.

Contrary to the general expectation, the leaders of business community belonging to Gujrat, Lahore, Sialkot, Gujaranwala and other cities of Punjab – considered pro-PML-N – were highly critical of the FBR and government policies.

They said the numbers of filers were declining while junior FBR officials were sending notices without any justification.

It was highlighted that to expand the filer base, the government should make it mandatory for those having commercial utility metres to have NTN too.

The ginners and importers were critical of FBR, highlighting that accounts were frozen despite paying Rs100 million in taxes and nothing improper was found.

The business leaders said Pakistan’s exports have declined by around $6bn in three years and projected that another drop of $2-3bn was expected in the ongoing fiscal year.

“We should learn from Bangladesh which has demonstrated remarkable export growth despite not being a cotton producing country,” Mr Zubair Tufail said while giving the summary of FPCCI’s budget proposals.

He added that FBR should not consider business community as withholding agents.

The NA committee decided to discuss budget proposals in the next meeting and forward these to the Ministry of Finance.

Published in Dawn, March 17th, 2017