The latest budget of 2015-16 apart from other faults amounts to kill the booming poultry industry by increasing the tax burden on it. Levy of five per cent sales tax on compounded feed and five per cent on the import duty of soybean meal will ultimately result in seven per cent increase as poultry farms are not registered thus adding further two per cent to tax burden. Such increases amount to increasing the expense on public health funding as poultry provides as much as 40 per cent of animal protein to people which is already desperately short at a level of 17 gms per capita daily against optimum requirement of 35 gms.
Poultry is the only success story in agriculture sector by growing about 10 per cent each year while agriculture and livestock show a depressingly lower growth. This amounts to killing the goose which lays a golden egg in an attempt to get all the eggs at once. As such this unjustified tax increase on the poultry industry would backfire by a slower growth or minus growth in the poultry sector which would be self-defeating. Poultry sector is a highly sensitive and vulnerable sector which should be carefully treated in the taxation policy as a slight tampering with poultry might result in depressed growth cascading in events beyond control of government agencies. In any case poultry growth in the private sector is essentially without any help from the government. As such tax increases are not justified by the authorities in this particular sector.
DR MUHAMMAD YAQOOB BHATTI
Lahore
