Agreeing to tax all types of incomes, the top four mainstream political parties – Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), PML-Quaid (PML-Q) and Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) on Friday approved a proposal of the conglomerate of big businesses, the Pakistan Business Council (PBC), to set up a working group to develop consensus within a month’s time on a national economic agenda for economic revival.
Top leaders of political parties and businesses gathered in the federal capital to discuss the way forward for economic growth. Unlike in the past, the corporate leaders expressed confidence in political parties to forge a joint consensus on economic issues like they did on the National Finance Commission Award and the 18th Amendment. It was agreed that the proposed economic policies would be owned by political parties and they would sign an agreement for its implementation to insulate them from any political changes in future.
The politicians nodded to the proposal of agriculturist-turned politician Jehangir Khan Tareen that all parliamentarians should declare their income and the tax paid by them. Surprisingly, the PML-N leaders took the lead in demanding justification from party heads to justify their lifestyles for taxing the people. All politicians agreed that time had come to introduce a tax culture in the country for better deliverance and governance.
They also supported the opening of trade with India, attributing regional trade as a key to growth with the MQM going forward to allow Indian investment in Pakistan. Engro Chief Executive Asad Umar said political parties and big businesses had failed to meet the aspirations of the people during the last three years as inflation had averaged 15 percent with the GDP growth of 3 percent. “There is no data available but poverty has significantly increased in the last three years.”
He said the private sector investment declined by a massive Rs 1 trillion or $12 billion in the last three years, adding that the country’s growth rate remained half that of Bangladesh and one third of India during the last three years. He said during talks with the political leadership they found there was 90 percent consensus on what needed to be done but due to difficult decisions there was no agreement on the implementation.
“We believe political leadership has the capacity to come up with a strategy to give tangible solutions to challenges we face.” Blaming the flawed monetary policy for the current high inflation and low growth, Senator Haroon Akhtar Khan stressed establishing DFIs and lowering the interest rate to promote investment, adding that “otherwise there is no possibility of getting out of low growth and high inflation”. He stressed a cautious approach while opening trade with India as some of the sectors were not competitive.
Attributing the current problems to the leadership, Ahsan Iqbal of the PML-N said positive signals from the government and corporate leaders would help attract investment back to the country. While stressing taking benefit from regional trade he asked for adopting knowledge economy for growth. Shahid Khaqan Abbasi of the PML-N demanded that the political leadership justify their lifestyle before asking people to pay taxes. He said the solution for power woes lay with the entrepreneurs and not with the government.
He stressed in improving quality of education for economic growth. Demanding abolition of the support price mechanism, Farooq Sattar of the MQM called for taxing the agriculture income as commodity prices were booming. He supported opening of trade with India on all products and through all routes and even suggested that India should be allowed investment in Pakistan. PPP leader Raja Pervez Ashraf assured complete support in the implementation of the national economic agenda.
Senator Waqar Ali Khan proposed pursuing privatisation in the power and energy sectors but stressed that the balance sheets of companies should be optimised before bringing them under the hammer. The session was attended by Raja Pervez Ashraf, Sherry Rehman, Waqar Ali and Qamar Zaman Kaira from the PPP, Dilawar Abbas and Haroon Akhtar from the PML-Q, Ahsan Iqbal, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Khurram Dastagir and Zahid Hamid from the PML-N and Farooq Sattar, Ahmad Ali and Abdul Rashid Godil from the MQM.
The PBC was represented by Engro CEO Asad Umar, Kamran Mirza, Abdul Razak Dawood, Ali Habib, Hussain Dawood, Iqbal Lakhani, Zakir Mehmood, Asad Sayeed, Ijaz Nabi, Ishrat Hussain, Farooq Rehmatullah and Shams Lakha.
