Federal Minister for Commerce Engineer Khurram Dastgir on Monday said the government had decided in principle to introduce zero-rating regime for exports from next financial year.
Addressing a meeting at Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FCCI), he said despite multifarious and multi-dimensional challenges, sincere efforts by the government led to positive improvements in energy sector.
He said that 16-hour long loadshedding of electricity had been reduced to only four hours and efforts were on to give further relief to the people.
He said that initially a proposal was under consideration to allow zero-rating to only five export sectors but now his ministry was contemplating to extend it to the nine value-added sectors.
He said, “We have done a lot but more has to be done to put the country on the road to progress and prosperity.”
He said that PML-N government had brought political stability and as soon as the economic situation further improved, more relief would be provided to the business community.
Regarding refund claims, he said that this issue would be addressed with the introduction of zero-rating regime for export sectors and then all efforts would be diverted to the payment of pending refund claims.
Regarding exports, the federal minister said that the GSP-Plus status was one of the biggest facilities earned by this government which had played an instrumental role in making 33 percent increase in exports to the EU countries.
He said that unprecedented boost had been recorded in the exports of readymade garments, leather products and home textiles and hence this apprehension should be scratched out of minds once for all that Pakistan had failed to harvest the benefits of GSP-Plus and this facility would be withdrawn ahead of its scheduled period.
He categorically announced that this facility would continue up to December 31, 2023 and hence, Pakistani exporters had clear 8 years to further explore new markets and export new products to the EU countries.
He said that Pakistan was the first country that had established a separate organization to monitor the implementation on 27 UN conventions and protocols.
