KARACHI: Federal Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has announced a crackdown against price control committees and middlemen and said that the prices of pulses, commodities, poultry and petroleum products are decreasing in the global market, but the prices of these commodities in the local market are decreasing. There is no shortage.
Addressing the press conference after the meeting at the Overseas Chamber of Commerce and Industry on Saturday, the Finance Minister said that next month there will be an important meeting regarding inflation in the ECC, the government will now take tough decisions regarding price reduction.
The finance minister said that sales tax is not being imposed on petroleum products, the country is losing 190 billion rupees daily due to sit-ins and marches on Islamabad.
He said that the government institutions are also causing a loss of 2 billion 20 crore rupees daily which has caused a loss of 6 thousand billion rupees in the last 10 years.
He said that due to the strict measures taken by the government, there has been a large reduction in smuggling and the government is taking more strict measures in this regard.
He said that there are no problems in remittance of profits to overseas investors. Overseas investors have sent 2 billion 20 billion dollars profit to their respective countries in 2 months.
The Finance Minister said that the overseas investors will also help us in privatization of various sectors of the country. Investments are coming to Pakistan from many countries. Agricultural taxes are on the way, eliminating all leakages of sales tax. Wholesalers and retailers have to come into the tax net. State Bank is responsible for currency market and policy rate, we can only give opinion.
He said that despite the decrease in the inflation rate, the people are still not benefiting.
In response to a question, he said that remittances of 30 billion and 50 billion dollars were received last year, the growth of remittances has been better in the first 4 months of this financial year and if the current growth continues, remittances will exceed 35 billion dollars this year.
