Chairman Pakistan Peoples Party, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari addressed a meeting of industrialists and business community of Punjab in Lahore on Tuesday Afternoon.
Chairman Bilawal said that he wants to speak about future of business community and how the Pakistan Peoples Party can help. He appreciated the efforts and research in the 165 districts in Pakistan of the business community to increase the opportunities of exports. He said that we also want to give our input and to implement your efforts. The PPP laid the foundation of China Pakistan Economic Corridor as its aim was to benefit Pakistan and its people. He said “It was a matter of pride for me to find out as the foreign minister that China specially accommodates Pakistan and wants to give preference to Pakistani goods for export but we are not taking the full advantage of that Chinese preference for Pakistani goods.” We need to get benefit of this favorable status and then we can ask them for more. China has provided this opportunity in every sector but we are not taking full benefit of these opportunities. We have to look for opportunities with this new tariff situation. We hope that the federal government must be working on those lines. We have GSP Plus with Europe and we have increased 80% export with this GSP Plus. Europe has also benefitted 60% in export to Pakistan with this GSP Plus. We can find economic opportunities district-wise, specially in value added goods.
He said that we can look for increase export in foreign market. We can also find Public-Private partnership district-wise. This will be an achievement for Pakistan if we work district-wise. As far as the President, Governor Punjab, Governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh government and Balochistan government and the Prime Minister are concerned, they all wants to work with you. There is a difference between Prime Minister’s and our teams is that they believes in centralization whereas we believe in de-centralization. Your district-wise plan will strengthen our argument. I want to strongly appreciate your district-wise research. Chairman PPP said that he is ready to consider the recommendations for economy of the business community.
Regarding the issue of taxes, he said that business community’s point of view is very valid. We all want to increase revenue of Pakistan, tax collection and tax net. We all have the same goal for economic progress and human development. We have different perspective regarding how to reach that goal. This and the previous government wanted to run the economy by force but I do not think that country’s economy can be run by force. We should run the economy with understanding. There is an English proverb that you can catch more with honey than vinegar. If we respect the tax contributing citizens instead of brow beat them to pay tax then we can get far better results. There is an example that before 18th amendment the collection of sales tax on services for federation was collected by the FBR and the record is for everyone to see that how much the FBR used to collect. After 18th amendment Sindh and other provinces started collecting these taxes for federation and we have broken the record for collecting these taxes. Every province has collected more than previously collected by the federation. This is an evidence of the benefit of de-centralization. The performance of Sindh province in collecting these taxes has been better than other provinces. The secret of this better performance is that Sindh has less sales tax on services in Sindh than other provinces so that business community desires to do business in our province. Our approach is to encourage the business community. We should make FBR an institution in which every province should have representation. People and business community should have confidence of FBR so that we can achieve our targets of tax collection. Tax should be a responsibility not a burden.
We request the federal government that if it needs to overcome economic difficulties then the solution is there. At the moment, the FBR also collects sales tax on goods for the federation. This responsibility may also be given to the provinces. If the provinces meet your target then we are ready to give all these collections to the federation. If the provinces do not meet the targets then the federation may deduct that amount from our share in the kitty on a condition that if we collect more than the target then that money is given to the province which collects that extra amount. In this way the provinces will have an incentive.
The power issue has been a chronic problem in Pakistan. We can look for solutions to overcome this issue. We need to study the proposal presented by the business community of Punjab in this regard. The manifesto of the PPP for the last elections wanted to give relief to the people using up to 200 units. We can still subsidize the people using less than 200 units. We need to change our concept of relief. Instead of cross-subsidizing the rest of the population, in the short term we seek to provide through green energy to people using less than 200 units. We have tried our best and the PPP has provided power through Thar Coal Project of the Sindh government which is the cheapest energy generation project. Thar Coal Project is a Public Private Partnership project, provided energy to Faisalabad. This project was initially not for Karachi. The provincial governments can stablish energy generation plants for 50 megawatts. We had two plants of 50 megawatts which is supplying the cheapest electricity to K-Electric through our own built transmission line. Chairman Bilawal offered business community of Punjab to get coal from Sindh.
One of notable achievement of the Sindh government has been the Public Private Partnership which is performing great in sectors like infrastructure, education, health and energy. This improves service delivery of Sindh government. We hope that as a result of your district-wise research we can take this Public Private Partnership to district level. We can get great results by this Public Private Partnership. Special Economic Zone of Khairpur in Sindh has been recognized by a magazine of Financial Times. We have other Economic Zones as well in Larkana, Dhabeji and others. We need to de-centralize these economic zones, he concluded.
