ISLAMABAD: Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq has described the energy sector as a nightmare for the country because government produces costly electricity and sells it at subsidised rate. He also underlined the need to bring about improvement in the taxation system.

While talking to participants at the 12th National Balochistan Workshop, the caretaker prime minister said that there is a serious concern the way taxation are being done.

He added that if there is one challenge which needs to be addressed in the entire governance structure that is the country’s taxation system. “If we cannot improve our Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), probably we will fail on many accounts,” he added

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He said that the country’s receivable is Rs9,000 billion against the stated goal of around Rs17,000 to Rs18,000 billion. So 50 per cent of that is already gone.

Kakar said that 20 per cent economy is documented and 80 per cent is undocumented. And we fail 50 per cent in that and now there is informal private sector and formal private sector, he said, adding that the formal sector which is being taxed feels that it is being tax in an unfair manner.

He said that the informal sector is contributing towards diseasing the economy in the worst manner. He said that the informal sector is creating a grey area of illegal currency trade which eventually impacts bank rates. They are non-contributors towards resource structure of the nation but are beneficiary of resource structure. He said that Pakistan has SOEs and energy sector is a nightmare in the country as the government produces expensive electricity and then subsidizes it. There is a debt of Rs900 billion on the PIA.

He said that Quetta-Karachi dual carriage way is close to his heart and Khuzdar-Quetta tender has been issued and for Khuzdar-Karachi project, we are trying to attract someone from GCC on PPP basis.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2023