‘Access Interpol to bring back $97 bn from Swiss banks’

ISLAMABAD: A parliamentary panel of the upper House on Wednesday recommended the help of Interpol to bring back $97 billion stashed in Swiss bank accounts by Pakistanis.
It finalised recommendations for Budget 2015-16 calling for an increase in salaries and pensions by 20 percent, and making budgetary provision for life and medical insurance of journalists.
The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenue, which met under the chairmanship of Senator Saleem Mandviwalla here at the Parliament House, also recommended providing a special package for the martyrs of the Army Public School (APS), Peshawar, both staff as well as students.
The committee also approved the recommendation to allocate funds for the National Counter-Terrorism Authority (Nacta). Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed said a “truce” has been made between the PM and interior minister, so now did allocation for Nacta should be made.
The committee finalised recommendations to bring agriculture income into the tax net. It was also recommended to abolish the sales tax on electricity and gas and do away with the petroleum levy with an immediate effect.
Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed proposed to the committee that if the government was sincere in catching the real tax evaders, then justice demands that accounts held by the Pakistanis in Swiss banks and offshore accounts also be made accessible to the FBR, because that was where the “big fish” lay.
There is already a precedent since the United States government asked for details of secret Swiss bank accounts of American citizens to catch tax evaders. The help of Interpol can be sought in this regard and funds allocated for this purpose in the budget. The committee granted its approval to this proposal, which will be forwarded to the National Assembly.
FBR’s Senior Member Shahid Hussain Asad told the parliamentary committee that it would not be an easy task to get information about the account holders from the Swiss authorities but Islamabad was going to join the global forum for exchange of information, which would become operative from 2017 onwards. He said that the FBR wrote letters to Dubai and the UAE authorities for seeking information on those individuals who had invested massively in property but they got no response from them.
The committee also finalised a proposal for making security arrangements for cyber warfare and asking the government to table details of international loan agreements.The committee recommended the government to decrease the allocation for the PM House and Presidency in the budget. Dr Waqar Masood, Secretary Finance, told the committee that the expenditure of the PM House was slashed down by 34 percent when the government assumed powers in 2013-14. This fiscal year, he said, the current expenditure was frozen for practical purposes while the development allocation was jacked up by 27 percent.
On the monster of circular debt, the finance secretary said that it had re-emerged and stood at around Rs270 billion. In the wake of declining oil prices, he said, Pakistan possessed a golden opportunity to plug its leakages before the upsurge of prices in the international market.
For bringing retailers into the tax net, Chairman FBR Tariq Bajwa told the committee that the tax machinery would have to work hard for four to five years to bring the retailers into the tax net. He said that the government brought certain changes in the sales tax act in the last budget whereby certain tiers were introduced to bring air conditioned, chain stores and electricity users exceeding bill of Rs50,000 into the tax net. Around three thousand were registered into the tax net including Bata and Service chains having outlets in the range of 400 all over the country, so the total registration stood at around 8,000.
Senator Ilyas Bailour of ANP raised the issue for lesser allocation for the western route of Pak-China Economic Corridor (CPEC) in the budget, saying that the government allocated Rs127 billion for the eastern route and Rs17 billion for the western route. The secretary Planning Division contested these figures and said the government had allocated Rs10 billion for Burhan to Dera Ismail Khan connection feasibility study after which its exact cost and other specification would be calculated.