Power bills: FBR to explain the reasons behind ‘two further taxes’ today

ISLAMABAD: The Finance Ministry and the Federal Board of Revenue’s failure to explain the logic of collecting two kinds of further taxes on electricity bills necessitated a detailed briefing from the FBR Friday (July 12) to the National Assembly Standing Committee on Finance.

A meeting of the finance committee presided over by Syed Naveed Qamar has asked the FBR to explain as to how many kinds of further taxes are being collected from the electricity consumers through their bills. He said that sales tax is collected on the sale of all goods and electricity is also a good.

When asked about the other taxes collected on electricity bills, the FBR chairman said that two further taxes are collected on electricity bills from non-filers but was unable to explain the categories of non-filers.

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Upon this, the chairman of the committee said, “I don’t think the question was fully answered, therefore, the FBR should answer the question in the meeting today about the taxes collected from the electricity consumers”.

The secretary finance briefed the committee on an overview of the economy, GDP growth, budget deficit, current account, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, energy circular debts and other economic indicators for the last fiscal year and projection for the current fiscal year.

Finance Minister and Minister of State for Finance also informed the committee about the measures proposed to meet the challenges to the economy in the budget and beyond.

They said the corrective measures have been taken to address the fiscal deficit and the country’s external accounts.

They said that the government is negotiating an IMF Programme to address structural weaknesses in the economy.

The government will achieve the targeted GDP growth at 3.6 per cent and inflation at 12 per cent, the meeting was further informed.

The meeting was told that according to the ILO, unemployment rate in the country is 8.2 per cent while according to the World Bank, it is 10 per cent and as per IMF 8 per cent.

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