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CM says low tax rate is cardinal component of fiscal policy
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said on Thursday that his government with the assistance of World Food Programme (WFP) and other donor agencies is working hard to resolve the issues of malnutrition and stunting.
This he said while talking to the delegation of WFP Executive Director Executive Director in Pakistan David M Beasley. WFP Regional Director David Kaatrud, Country Director Mr Finbarr Curran, Deputy Country Director Katrien Ghoos, MNA Marvi Memon, Benazir Income Suppor Programme (BISP) Additional Director General Naveed Akbar, Provincial Planning and Development (P&D) Minister Saeed Ghani, Chief Secretary Rizwan Memon, Chairman P&D Mohammad Waseem and Principal Secretary to CM Sohail Rajput were also present on the occasion.
The chief minister said that the WFP has a long history of providing humanitarian and development assistance to the Sindh, working closely with government concerned departments, UN agencies and local International NGO partners to respond the emergencies food security and livelihoods needs identified in the province.
He added that these include the emergency response activities during the large-scale floods of 2010, 2011 and 2012 along with livelihood recovery activities through the Food Assistance for Assets (FAA) using cash as a modality.
Murad Ali Shah said that as part of its new three-year of operations which began in January 2016, the WFP support the implementation of FAA (using cash or food as modalities), Nutrition (Community Management of Acute Malnutrition and Stunting Prevention), Disaster Risk Management as well as Capacity Development and Augmentation (CD&A) activities in the province.
Since 2013 WFP has also been implementing nutrition sensitive interventions providing nutrition support to vulnerable communities with programmes including the Community based Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), Blanket Supplementary Feeding and Stunting Prevention, Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and capacity augmentation activities in the region. In 2015, WFP had assisted 508,120 beneficiaries with $6.1 million in cash and 3670 tones of food in the Sindh.
CM SAYS PROGRESSIVE TAX POLICY ADOPTED IN PROVINCE:
The CM said that the provincial government is pursuing a progressive tax policy rather than a regressive one with a low tax rate as its cardinal component. Consequently, no new tax was levied in the budget 2017-18, announced on June 5, 2017, maintaining the standard rate at 13 percent, the lowest in any tax domain in the country.
This he said while talking to Sindh Revenue Board (SRB) Chairman Khalid Mahmood who presented him SRB annual report-2016-17 here at CM House.
This report acknowledges the contribution of the taxpayers in the top 10 sectors. Nevertheless, enormous efforts are required to open up the services sector, predominately in the informal segment of the economy, to boost documentation and the tax revenue, with the past nationwide experience not serving as a guide.
The chief minister said the revenue target of Rs100 billion set for FY 2017-18 poses an enormous challenge. He urged the SRB employees to employ all resources and put in their best efforts to achieve this target without compromising organisation’s taxpayer-friendly image, espoused over the years.
The report said that a considerable progress has been made in improving the IT-system and initiating necessary work for introduction of Point of Sales (POS) system for services involving cash transactions. By the end of the year 2017-18 or around, POS system is likely to be in place embracing the key service in that sector.
The chief minister directed the SRB chairman to lay the report before the Sindh Assembly for scrutiny, in keeping with the democratic norms. The legislators would discuss the report to further improve the SRB performance.