The Council of Common Interests (CCI) will consider gas price and distribution, issues pertaining to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) and net hydel profit in the upcoming meeting, Minister for Inter-Provincial Co-ordination Riaz Hussain Pirzada told Business Recorder.
The meeting of CCI is expected to be convened in the third week of the current month and the agenda for the meeting has been refined in close co-ordination with the provinces. The Minister said that a summary has been sent to the Prime Minister for establishment of a permanent secretariat of CCI at the Ministry.
The Ministry of Water and Power and the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have decided to take the determination of tariff and increase of net hydel profit to the CCI as required by Nepra in deciding new tariff. The determination of tariff and increase in net hydel profit issue is on the agenda, the Minister added. He further said that import and pricing issues pertaining to LNG are very critical and have been added to the meeting agenda.
Pakistan People''s Party (PPP) parliamentary leader Senator Saeed Ghani told Business Recorder that Chief Minister Sindh Qaim Ali Shah has stated that issues pertaining to privatisation will be raised in the upcoming meeting of CCI. "The privatization of public entities need provincial input and are likely to be discussed in the forthcoming meeting," he added.
Ghani said that keeping in view the strained relations between the federal and Sindh governments, progress reports of the National Action Plan (NAP) need to be presented to the CCI as this is an inter-provincial matter which needs to be reviewed by the relevant constitutional forum. He said it is deplorable negligence on part of the government for not convening the meeting of the CCI due to which a number of outstanding issues have begun to pile up as potential conflicts.
One of the issues to be finalised by the CCI is Sindh government''s concerns with respect to double payment of withholding tax, sources revealed. The sources said Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) had made changes in Withholding Tax laws through the Finance Act, 2014 and its recovery with effect from 1st July, 2014.
At present, two types of advance tax/withholding tax are collected by the Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Department on behalf of FBR under Section 231B at the time of registration of new vehicles above 850 cc (one time tax) and collection of adjustable advance tax at the time of collection of annual motor vehicle tax, as per given schedule.
According to the Sindh government, new changes in the collection of advance tax at the time of registration of vehicles will now also be collected at the time of each transfer of ownership of the (private) vehicles till 5 years from its date of registration. Further, now it will be collected at different rates from the filer of Income Tax Return and non filer of Income Tax Return from minimum Rs 10,000 to maximum of Rs 250,000. Further, at the time of collection of annual motor vehicle tax two categories have been created by FBR ie filer and non-filer of Income Tax Return.
FBR had intimated that the Excise, Taxation and Narcotics Department can download a list of filers from the website into their system.
Provincial government argues that by going through all these changes made by FBR without consultation from Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Department who shall act as their "agent" to collect these taxes, they have the following concerns: (i) major software changes have to be incorporated by the Department for incorporating the said changes which may require at least 30 days and that too will depend in future on uninterrupted internet services between two departments; (ii) the software company of the department may charge a heavy fee for implementing the said changes; (iii) to manage the filer and non-filer categories of old registered vehicles on the basis of CNIC may not be possible for the department, because its previous data base was not designed on a CNIC basis; (iv) with the introduction of advance tax at the time of transfer of vehicle the recovery of Excise, Taxation & Narcotics Department will suffer badly as motoring public will prefer to ply their vehicles on open letters to avoid payment of extraordinary Withholding Tax imposed; (v) non-transfer of vehicles may create problems for law enforcement agencies in the identification of their actual owners; (vi) with the increase in advance tax at the time of payment of annual Motor Vehicle Tax the number of defaulters may increase resulting in loss of government revenue; and (vii) motoring public may prefer to register their vehicles in those provinces where the computerised system is not effective to avoid heavy taxes which may be a loss to Sindh government.
Senator Nauman Wazir Khattak of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) said that currently a moratorium is being placed on new gas connections in the country. KP government may raise the gas distribution and connection issue in the forthcoming meeting. According to Article 158 of the Constitution, moratorium on gas connection for the province is a violation and needs to be addressed in the CCI meeting.
The 18th Amendment mandated that a meeting of the CCI would be called every three months as a constitutional mechanism to ensure that the relationship between the federal and provincial governments in the country remains in balance. However ten months have passed since the last CCI meeting was held. The incumbent PML-N government has conducted only five meetings of the CCI during the last two and a half years of its tenure while it should have held nine meetings as per the requirement of the Constitution.
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