Opposition parties termed the mini budget as anti-people while stated that government with the presented mini budget only to provide benefit to multinational companies and rich people and it had nothing for the poor. The government while presenting third finance bill for current fiscal year in National Assembly, termed it as an economic reforms package which was needed to fix the economy, government believed. Government with the intention to support the industry through this business revival package and proposed a settlement of GIDC arrears and a reduction in overall rate of GIDC for all sectors in an effort to reduce cost of doing business in the country which is a key aspect to improve businesses, expanding the strengthen the said sector in the country. It is for sure that Pakistan is facing a tough time in the term of foreign investments, and the government has to take more measures to attract foreign investments in the country.
The government also addressed the key agent responsible for low foreign and domestic investments is the high cost of doing business due to distortions in tax regime and cumbersome processes, for this purpose the government rationalize all the federal taxes; income tax, sales tax, federal excise duty and custom tariffs to remove anti business distortions and provide a pro growth and pro investment framework. But this is a multi-faceted problem and has to be addressed more widely.
In the mean time the country export-import gap is considerable large, the fundamental weakness in the economy is the large and growing gap between exports and imports. In recent years, the problem has become even more acute because of a surge in imports and stagnation in country’s exports but to decrease the gap between the export-import there should be a balance of payment fragilities and macroeconomic instability. Even the business community has hailed supplementary finance bill 2019 presented by the PTI government as it has offered good benefits to SMEs, industry, agriculture and capital market that would spur the growth of these important sectors of the economy. However, FBR has hold billions of rupees of exporters, causing liquidity problems for the businessmen in the country. We don’t notice restructuring of FBR as it is vital for the increase in country revenue collection.
It is a dire need that government must focus to take measures to control inflation as prices of all the daily use items have been increased during recent months.