Cost of smuggling bears heavy on country’s economic stability: PM

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan Wednesday chaired a high level meeting to review anti-smuggling and anti-money-laundering measures.
The Prime Minister said that heavy damage is inflicted on economy of the country due to smuggling of food commodities due to price differential. He added that smuggling creates artificial shortage of commodities and ultimately results in price hike.
The Prime Minister directed that all stakeholders should undertake emergency measures and bring-out-of-the-box solutions to control smuggling of essential commodities. He emphasized that the objective is to provide relief to the common man against price hike.
The meeting was informed that FIA has undertaken extensive investigations against illegal money laundering and holding of US dollars. It was apprised that manpower is being increased at border crossings to check goods and to ensure that each load is recorded for tracking purposes.
The meeting was briefed that significant success has been achieved to control illegal petrol smuggling and operations against hoarders.
The meeting was attended by Federal Ministers Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Muhammad Hammad Azhar, Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtiar, Syed Fakhar Imam, Asad Umar, Advisor Finance Shaukat Fayaz Tarin, Advisor Commerce Abdul Razaq Dawood, SAPM Dr. Shehbaz Gill, Governor State Bank, Chairman FBR, senior civil and military officers.
Separately, Prime Minister Imran Khan has congratulated Federal Board of Revenue for achieving an increase of 35 percent in revenue collection during the last month as compared to November 2020.
Sharing a graph of FBR collection in his tweet Wednesday, the Prime Minister said tax collection increased by 37 percent during the last five months as compared to the same period of the last year.
“Congratulations to the FBR team for achieving a 35% increase in revenues in November over last year,” the premier tweeted.
Imran Khan also mentioned the 37 percent increase in the five months over last year.
Earlier, the FBR said it had registered a “historic growth” in revenue collection of 36.5 percent from July-November of the fiscal year 2021-22.
“It has collected net revenues of Rs 2,314 billion during the first five months of the current FY against set target of Rs 2,016 billion, exceeding by Rs.298 billion,” an official tweet of FBR said.