PESHAWAR, Aug 9: The Pakistan Chemists and Druggists Association had welcomed the government’s decision to exempt more drugs from the General Sales Tax, said a press release on Friday.

A meeting of the PCDA, Peshawar district, presided over by its chairman, Arbab Jawed Ahmad, on Friday, welcomed the government decision of exempting more drugs from the GST but asked the President Pervez Musharraf to do away with the GST on all medicines to enable the poor buy the drugs.

The government imposed 15 per cent GST on all drugs but later exempted 256 life-saving drugs from the same. The list of the exempted drugs reached to 480 when the government formed a committee, comprising minister for finance, health and commerce two months back which recommended the removal of sale tax from other drugs.

The meeting through a resolution passed unanimously asked the government to exempt all drugs from the levy, arguing that the prices of the drugs were already so high that average patients could not afford them. Besides, the PCDA meeting claimed that the removal of the GST on the drugs would also benefit the 65,000 chemists and their families who were dependent on the drug business for their survival.

The association hoped that the government would take a compassionate view of the poor patients and would remove the tax from all the medicines in the larger interests of the 140 million population of the country.

The meeting was attended by PCDA’s leaders including Abdul Hadi Khan, Jawed Ahmad Khan, Arshad Siddiqui, Abdul Latif Qureshi and Mohammad Iqbal.