revenue collection was just 1 percent.
Talking about Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs), he said that the government has prepared a three-year plan to phase out SROs but reminded that only concessions for individuals and sectors would be abolished while those SROs would stay which were meant for regulatory purposes.
In the previous budget, he said, the government abolished SROs worth Rs203 billion and more SROs would be abolished in the coming budget.
He also said that the perception regarding corruption in the tax machinery needed to be changed and there was need to introduce performance-based evaluation system to run the FBR in an efficient manner.
Chairman Tax Reform Commission (TRC) Masood Naqvi said that the lack of enforcement was the biggest problem of the tax machinery. He emphasised that all income irrespective of source should be tapped. In medium to long term, he proposed, there is need to set up National Tax Agency to collect all taxes (federal, provincial and local) and the robust technology should support its allocations to federation, provinces and the local bodies.
He also called for devising measures to enhance the taxpayers’ cost of evasion, reforming the entire tax collection system preventing dodgers from going underground and strengthening tax administration to increase potential of discovering non-compliant tax payers.
Nauman Ishtiaq, consultant in ministry of finance, on the occasion, dwelt upon the systems and procedures for budget making process and said that there was need to bring further improvements in this whole process.
Former economic advisor, Dr Ashfaque H Khan, who is currently serving as dean NUST Business School, warned that Pakistan had landed into stagflation and criticised the IMF which was advocating tight fiscal policy by considering budget deficit as sacrosanct target.
“The IMF has turned into European Monetary Fund (EMF),” he said and added that Pakistan should be allowed to hike the budget deficit with the purpose of increasing public investment for promoting jobs-led growth. Noted economist Dr Athher Maqsood, former advisor Sakib Sherani, Dr Idrees Khawaja and VC PIDE Dr Asad Zaman also spoke on the occasion.