ISLAMABAD: The Senate Standing Committee on Finance on Tuesday recommended the government for clearing 10,600 imported vehicles stuck up at the Karachi Port with immediate effect.
The Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenues held its meeting under Chairmanship of Senator Saleem Mandviwalla here at the Parliament House on Tuesday and termed the move of the Ministry of Commerce as part of “high-handedness” for changing policy overnight resulting into 10,600 imported vehicles getting stuck up at the Karachi Port.
Mandviwalla said he was receiving complaints that the FBR’s Customs officials were not clearing imported vehicles and now the number of stuck up vehicles had gone up to 10,600. FBR’s Member Customs Zahid Kokhar told the committee that Ministry of Commerce brought changes through notification binding that importer of vehicle will have to open a foreign currency account in the country of origin that had created stumbling block as all stuck up vehicle could not be cleared in the presence of such conditions. The FBR took up the issue with the Ministry of Commerce, which decided to clear vehicles where the bill of entry filed up to Feb 6, 2018.
However, the Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Cabinet endorsed the FBR version and Ministry of Commerce was asked to withdraw the notification. The Ministry of Commerce, Member Customs said, has not yet withdrawn its notification arguing that they were awaiting endorsement of the Federal Cabinet. “We expect that the federal cabinet will grant its approval today as its going to meet with PM in the chair,” he added.
Senator Kamil Ali Agha said that it was high-handedness demonstrated by the Ministry of Commerce in order to please the influential car manufacturers in Pakistan as they wanted to curtail imports of cars. The committee members were of the view that the local manufacturers were getting ‘Aoun’ of Rs 400,000 on immediate delivery otherwise they were giving time of delivery of car of over six months.
The FBR high-ups told the committee that they had confiscated 3363 vehicles from 2014-15 to till to date as they seized 1026 vehicles at Peshawar, 2150 at Quetta, 187 at Karachi and 449 from others. He claimed that they were conducting auction of seized goods and vehicles every month.
Income Tax Returns: The FBR told the Senate panel that they received 1.238 million tax returns up to Feb 15, 2018 against 0.998 million in the same period of the last year that showed 24 percent growth. The tax return in the last fiscal year up to June 2017 had reached to 1.391 million. The senators argued that the growth in tax returns was only achieved in salaried class category where the number of return filers stood at 436,812 in tax year 2017 against full year returns of 474,521 in tax year 2016. In tax year 2013, total number of salaried class filers stood at 242,153 which went up to 326,129 filers in tax year 2014. The number of filers in salaried went up to 423,014 in tax year 2015.
The senators raised questions that why return filers dropped in hotel and insurance sectors. The FBR took stance that the active taxpayers list would be updated from March 1, 2018 so the number of return filers would go up in the remaining months of the current fiscal year up to June 2018.