President Zardari's Punjab Political Co-ordinator, Naveed Chaudhry, has said that the President promulgated ordinances to support the economy, hence the political parties should not criticise his decisions unnecessarily.
"It was a difficult decision for the President but it has been taken in the interest of the country. The government had presented reformed General Sales Tax (GST) bill in the Parliament to document the economy, to reduce revenue shortfall, to bring prospective taxpayers into the net and to strengthen economy but the political parties opposed it for personal reasons, setting aside the national agenda," he said while talking to Business Recorder.
Naveed Chaudhry said that the government intended to reduce 50% non-development expenditure. For this purpose, the government was taking many steps including a ban on new recruitments. He disclosed that Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) had supported the reformed GST in the meeting of Council of Common Interest (CCI) but in the parliament it had opposed the move. He said that the PML-N had politicised the issue which damaged the economy and inflation was increasing due to domestic borrowing by the government.
"On one they talk about use of domestic resources but on the other hand the political parties are not ready to implement reformed General Sales Tax (GST)." He added. Naveed Chaudhry said that three ordinances imposing 17 percent GST on fertilisers, agriculture and other items, 15 percent flood surcharge and raising of special excise duty from 1 to 2.5 percent were urgently needed by the government to reduce budget deficit. "I understand it was difficult decision but the leadership took it to take out the country out of economic crisis."
"All the political parties should adopt uniform national agenda to overcome these problems and other challenges faced by the country," he maintained. About 10-point agenda of PML-N, he said that although these points were already part of PPP's manifesto but it had decided to hold negotiations with the PML-N. However, the PML-N expelled the PPP ministers from the Punjab cabinet on the excuse of not implementing 10-point agenda.
"The PML-N once again resorted to horse trading, supporting the Forward Bloc of PML-Q to join them in the Punjab Assembly." Answering a question, he said that the PPP was showing restraint in Punjab because it did not want to destabilise the government by introducing the tradition of horse trading in the country once again.
Answering question on corruption and bad governance, he said that it is only propaganda against the PPP. He said that the PPP government strengthened the democratic institutions and all the decisions including NFC award, 18th Amendment, Afghz-e-Haqooq-e-Balochistan and others were made with consensus.
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