Tough decisions can put a devastating economy back on track: Mian Zahid Hussain

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On Friday, Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, President Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, All Karachi Industrial Alliance, and former provincial minister Mian Zahid Hussain said tough decisions would have to be taken to get Pakistan’s crippled economy back on track.

He said that the current broad-based government represents 70% of the country, and all political parties must agree on an economic recovery agenda, followed by the closure or sale of loss-making state-owned enterprises. Mian Zahid Hussain said that the dysfunctional energy sector deserves special attention as it is holding the national economy hostage by incurring losses of trillions of rupees.

Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that the tax system is flawed. The economy has suffocated and added that punishing taxpayers and rewarding tax evaders through amnesty schemes are wrong.

International organizations strongly object to such schemes, but such systems are not being stopped, giving negative signals.

Mian Zahid Hussain further said that the tax system is unbalanced. The tax burden on the industrial sector is very high, while the agricultural industry, which is almost equal to the industrial sector, has been given undue benefit.

One per cent of the country’s landlords occupy 22 per cent of the land from which they earn at least eight hundred billion rupees per annum. Still, they have taxed only two billion rupees which is tantamount to playing with the country’s integrity.

The income of big landowners is constantly increasing due to the sharp rise in the prices of agricultural commodities. However, the farmer is still in bad shape, and the agriculture sector cannot develop without making farmers prosperous.

He said that the country would have no future if the centre and all provincial governments did not take full interest in taxing agricultural income.

Arab countries have developed their agriculture by making deserts green, and Pakistan can do the same, but this is not being considered.

The import food bill of eight has risen to 6.4 billion, which is unsustainable. The business leader said that the PTI government had reduced the public sector development program from Rs900 billion to Rs600 billion. Still, no further cuts are necessary as subsidies on oil are burdening the exchequer, which cannot bear the burden.

At present, the state of the economy is very bad, and without tough and unpopular decisions, it is impossible to recover the limping economy, he observed.

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