Government to restore Zero Rating immediatley- No Payment No Refund System: Anjum Nisar

Karachi (HRNW) Mian Anjum Nisar, President, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FPCCI) held a comprehensive detailed meeting with the leading export oriented sector at PHMA House, Karachi with Muhammad Jawed Bilwani, Chairman, Pakistan Apparel Forum and urged the Government to honour its commitment with the export sector.

The President, FPCCI said that the exporters are in real fixed and under stress as Government is not implementing the decision it has taken to support export oriented sector. The Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance promised that the refunds will not get stuck up whereby he and his team have made a commitment that after passing of budget, his team will hold meetings with exporters and devise an automated system like in Bangladesh or China. Through the automated system, exporters will get a major amount from bank or the State Bank and would not be dependent on the FBR. Advisor Finance promised that if the new refund system will not work, the govt. will revisit its decision in 3-6 month period. Since more than 8 months have been passed and the FBR FASTER system has failed for speedy refunds, therefore, the Govt. should honour their commitment and restore zero rating – No Payment No Refund Regime for the export sectors.

Mian Anjum Nisar said that the exporters fear that their precious liquidity taken away by the Govt. in shape of sales tax worth billions of rupees which is completely stuck up and refunds may be excessively delayed because the FBR has also failed to achieve its revenue collection target.

President FPCCI further told that the Govt. has failed to refund sales tax claims under FASTER System of textile exporters as per commitment, to refund claim amount in 72 hours, contrarily the Govt. has not paid exporters’ claims for the last seven months. Approx. Rs100 billion of textile exporters liquidity held up under FASTER Refund System in last 8 months and total Rs210 billion are withheld with the Government. Payment timeline for payment of Customs Rebate claims which previously reduced to 7 months has again been prolonged to 13 months. However, Government also committed that Customs Rebate, DLTL claims will also be paid electronically along with export proceeds. Reportedly, hundreds of exporters SMEs have stopped their production owing to liquidity problems who have not received their sales tax refund claims for last seven months and due to high rates of utilities shall be compelled for closure if their sales tax refunds are not released on immediate basis and uility tariffs are not rationalized to facilitate them to get new orders and resume production.

The President FPCCI emphasized to implement power tariff of 7.5 cents/kwh including all charges across Pakistan including Karachi and RLNG at 6.5 dollars/MMBTU. President also mentioned that while notification of said tariffs was issued the time period inadvertently was missing, it should be for three years period as agreed. He further informed that the OGRA has separated zero rated industry from general industry for Gas Tariff while NEPRA is still not implementing the decisions of separate treatment for zero rated and general industry.

Mian Anjum Nisar President FPCCI said that the tariff for electricity and gas should be fixed on yearly basis for the Export Oriented Sectors and Priority be given only to these sector as the Export Sectors have to make commitments to their buyers for 6 months in advance and frequent increase in the electricity and gas tariffs jeopardizes their entire planning and they suffer huge losses to keep up commitments to their foreign buyers.