People have fed up with politics of protest: Abid Sher

FAISALABAD

Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar and business community of Faisalabad will discuss the FCCI proposals for the federal budget 2016-17, said State Minister for Water and Power Abid Sher Ali.

He was addressing a pre-budget seminar jointly organised by the FCCI and the ICMAP here on Friday. The state minister said that despite severe financial constraints, the government had successfully resolved the energy crisis on permanent basis. He said that loadshedding for industrial sector had become zero while the problem of gas had also been resolved on permanent basis. He disclosed that the Prime Minister would announce to issue new gas connections within next few weeks. He told that power generation in Pakistan was 13500MW just three years ago when the PML-N came into power, which had now jumped to 18000MW while many more power plants were also under construction. Commenting on the poor water storage capacity in Pakistan, he said that we were draining out 28MAF water into sea without its utilisation. The cost of this water was around $18 billion per annum, he said. He claimed that all dams were constructed by the PML-N government, adding that the people were fed up with the negative politics of protest and sit-in. He said that the ultimate objective of these sits-in was to peg the pace of progress. “People fully understand the implications of these conspiracies and would reject these elements in the next general elections”, he added. Abid Sher Ali said that mega project of Gawadar Port was nearly to complete and was expected to become functional by 2017. “It would ensure reliable connectivity for expeditious economic activity in this entire region, which would also bring prosperity in Pakistan”, he hoped. He termed the Pak-China Economic Corridor as a game changer and said that the government was serious in resolving the problems confronted by the business community. He said that he had discussed the refund issue with Ishaq Dar who has assured to pay the pending exporters claims. Hopefully the payment of refund claims would be started within next couple of weeks, he hoped. Earlier, Rana M Afzal Khan, Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Finance, appreciated the budget proposals of the FCCI and the ICMA and said that Pakistan was gradually heading towards economic stability and now we had to make our next budget growth-oriented. He said that we were spending $2 billion on the Operation Zarb-e-Azb. Regarding refund claims of exporters, he said that total amount of refund claims was calculated Rs 200 billion, which had now been reduced to Rs 170 billion. In his welcome address, acting FCCI president Syed Zia Alamdar Hussain said that the next federal budget should be growth-oriented. He told that the FCCI had prepared sector He demanded uniform taxation system without any exemption to any sector and said that it would not only expand the tax base but also help the government to collect more revenue instead of adding burden on the existing tax payers.