KARACHI: The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has urged the ministry of commerce to review the recent imposition of regulatory duty on 731 items, as it has been levied on raw materials not produced locally, as well. This was stated by Saquib Fayyaz Magoon, vice president of the FPCCI, while addressing the meeting of standing committee on import trade, held under the chairmanship of Khurram Ijaz, chairman of the FPCCI standing committee on import trade. He lamented for not taking the FPCCI and other associations concerned into confidence, while levying the regulatory duty and demanded the government to take FPCCI into confidence in all the major policy issues related to trade and industry. Magoon said that indiscriminate imposition of regulatory duty irrespective of finished goods and raw material not produced locally, would increase their cost of import, and as such, it would discourage legal imports and renders them in smuggling regime and will make indigenous industry uncompetitive against the smuggled goods on the one hand and loss of revenue to the government exchequer. He also said the duty on luxury items should not be increased to the extent where it provides incentives to smuggling. Ijaz, chairman of the FPCCI standing committee on import trade, said that imposition of regulatory duty would not help in reducing the trade deficit and the only solution to this problem is to increase Pakistan’s exports by slashing the cost of import of raw materials not produced locally with the view to bridge the yawning gap between import and exports. Administrative measures taken by the government to curtail smuggling will be counter-productive after the implementation of the regulatory duty, he added.
