Gap of $4bn in import data: FBR chief says China being asked to share data in real time

ISLAMABAD: Admitting a gap of $4 billion in import data, Pakistan has decided to take up this issue with China in order to secure Goods Declaration (GDs) wise import data, instead of the existing mechanism for securing only lump sum data under the exchange of information agreement. 

During the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Revenues meeting chaired by Senator Saleem Mandviwalla here on Wednesday, the Chairman FBR, Amjad Zubair Tiwana, said China was not providing real-time data and was sharing only lump sum data, which poses difficulties. “We are now asking China to provide GDs wise data to customs authorities,” the chairman FBR said. The FBR Member Customs, Zeba Hai, said that the Customs Pakistan Single Window was integrating with the Chinese Single Window System as Pakistan’s 23 percent imports were coming from China.

“There is a gap of $3 to $4 billion on imports from China,” she said and added that discrepancies in data existed in every country but its volume in the case of China was on the higher side.

The FBR chairman also informed the committee that there were a total of 4.9 million return filers and the tax machinery wanted to jack it up to 15 million, so there was a gap of 5 to 10 million return filers. Senator Farooq H Naek said that he was tired of paying so much tax but the FBR continued to penalise only the existing taxpayers and failed to bring new and potential non-filers into the tax net. He also pointed out that the FBR had failed to bring retailers into the tax net.

The FBR chairman replied that the FBR had set a target of bringing 0.7 million return filers but could admit only 1.2 million new filers into the tax net. He said the agriculture income was provincial tax under which Rs1.2 million was exempted from taxable income. He highlighted that the provinces were failing to impose taxes on the agricultural sector.

He said the tax exemption threshold for both salaried and business individuals at present is Rs600,000 per annum, which will continue.

The committee took up the case of withdrawal of money from accounts of a private bank account holders. The governor SBP said the total amount is about Rs254 million and action has been initiated against the manager. The representative of the affected families said that the amount was around Rs350 million. Of this, Rs270 million was reverted to the accounts within six weeks. The committee emphasised that such frauds in the banking sector should be monitored and action should be taken against those responsible.

The committee also discussed fake currency notes circulating in the market. The chairman said that most fake currency notes are of Rs1,000 denomination and they were coming out of ATMs.

The governor State Bank promised to change the security features of currency notes and said that would help in curbing fake currency notes.