KARACHI: Atif Ikram Sheikh, President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI), has said that the FPCCI’s comprehensive shadow budget for the fiscal year 2026-27 represents the collective wisdom of the business, industry and trade community of Pakistan.
He highlighted that the FPCCI had urged the federal government to incorporate its policy recommendations to ensure the upcoming budget was fundamentally driven by the objective of economic growth rather than customary revenue growth and stabilization emphasis.
Atif Ikram Sheikh maintained that adopting a growth-centric approach is the only viable path to mitigating Pakistan’s macroeconomic challenges, reducing the critical expansion in trade deficit, and providing much-needed relief to an industrial sector currently crippled by surging energy costs and high interest rates.
The FPCCI chief said that broadening the tax base remained the most critical structural reform required to shift Pakistan away from its chronic reliance on inflationary indirect taxes and the over-taxation of existing corporate sectors.
A sustainable expansion of the tax net must move beyond “coercive enforcement” against registered taxpayers; and, instead focus on bringing new taxpayers into the formal economy through digitization, data integration, and targeted incentives, he added.
Atif Ikram Sheikh said that total taxes on industrialists are up to 65 percent when all types of taxes are accounted for – which shall be brought down to the range of 35-40 percent in the upcoming budget “to enable us to compete in the international market and contribute to the national economy and export earnings”.
Saquib Fayyaz Magoon, SVP of the FPCCI, said that by leveraging advanced data analytics to identify high-income non-filers and simplifying, streamlining compliance procedures for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), the government could distribute the fiscal burden more equitably.
He said that the federal budget must shift its focus from aggressive revenue collection to facilitating a broad-based economic revival.
Abdul Mohamin Khan, VP and Regional Chairman (Sindh) of the FPCCI, said that the regional industries had been facing an unprecedented liquidity constraint.
He said that a high-interest-rate environment severely restricted the operational capacity of businesses across the province.
He urged the Ministry of Finance to incorporate FPCCI’s recommendations, which outline actionable steps to reduce manufacturing costs and create a genuinely business-friendly environment that can spur industrialization and job creation across Sindh and the rest of the country as well.
The FPCCI leadership unanimously concluded that the proposals outlined in the Shadow Budget offer a pragmatic, industry-backed roadmap. They warned that ignoring these stakeholder-driven recommendations in the finalized Federal Budget would risk further economic stagnation and industrial closures.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2026
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