PM Imran says path to progress begins, difficult period over: Traders out of NAB remit

ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi Friday promulgated the NAB Amendment Ordinance 2019 — a move that curtails the sweeping powers of the anti-corruption watchdog to act against any individual accused of corruption at will.

The ordinance provides complete immunity to business persons. The amended ordinance will not be applicable on matters related to federal or provincial taxes, duties, levies or imposts. All the pending investigations and inquiries related to taxes/ duties will be transferred to respective authorities or departments which deal with such taxes/ duties. While all such pending cases will be transferred from accountability courts to criminal courts, which deal with offences pertaining to taxation/ levies.

The ordinance said that NAB had assumed parallel jurisdiction and was inquiring into matters pertaining to taxation, imposition of levies etc. and therefore interfering within the domain of taxation regulatory bodies. It was felt necessary to define the operational domain of NAB.

The amended NAB ordinance provides more protection to a public office holder or government.

In a major amendment to the NAB law, the government mandated the NAB chairman to submit a report on complaints against the bureau to the federal government. Once an inquiry or investigation is closed, it cannot be opened again. For filing a reference, approval of president will be a must while for cases in provinces respective governor’s assent will be needed.

Earlier, the NAB chief used to submit the report to the president. As per the ordinance, it has been made mandatory for the NAB to obtain approval of a scrutiny committee, comprising the NAB chairman, cabinet secretary, SECP chairman, FBR chief, and a law ministry representative, before acting against any government official. It further states that the NAB would not seize property of government officials without the court orders.

If the anti-graft watchdog cannot complete an investigation against a suspect within three months, the accused would be entitled to bail, it added. The remand period of NAB custody has been cut to 14 days from 90 days. The NAB would now only be able to proceed in corruption cases of Rs500 million and above. Earlier, the minimum limit was Rs50 million.

Giving more relief to parliamentarians and government officials, the amended ordinance says: (c) unless a holder of public office has materially benefitted by gaining any monetary benefit or asset disproportionate to his known sources of income or which cannot be reasonably accounted for by the holder of public and there is evidence to corroborate such material benefit, NAB shall not take cognizance of any offence under this Ordinance involving a procedural lapse including any offence specified in clause (vi) of Section 9(a);

(e) the valuation of immovable properties, for the purposes of assessing as to whether a holder of public office has assets disproportionate to his known sources of income, shall be reckoned either according to the actual price shown on the relevant title documents or the applicable rate prescribed by the District Collector or the Federal Board of Revenue, which is higher. No evidence contrary to the later shall be admissible.”

The NAB officials have been barred from giving statements on inquiry or investigation before the filing of reference. Now the NAB would seek guidance from the FBR or the district collector for land evaluation.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan has said as the business community was fearful of the National Accountability Bureau, therefore, his government has just taken the right step to promulgate a new ordinance to amend the NAB law. Now because of it, businessmen of the country are no more under the ambit of NAB.

The PM stated this on Friday as he was addressing the ceremony of Pakistan Stock Exchange Awards held here at the Sindh Governor’s House. Also present on the occasion were Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Federal Minister for Water Resources Faisal Vawda, Federal Minister for Maritime Affairs Ali Zaidi, Federal Finance Adviser Dr Abdul Hafeez Sheikh, Commerce Adviser to PM Abdul Razzak Dawood, governors for Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“One of the biggest issues faced by the business community was those related to NAB. There was a fear of NAB that it was capable of probing anyone. You should be pleased to hear that today we promulgated our NAB ordinance to isolate the business community from the NAB,” he said.

The PM said on the occasion that the NAB, after promulgation of the ordinance, was no more capable of making businessmen accountable. “Such responsibility should rest with the Federal Board of Revenue and similar other government agencies, and courts.”

He said that NAB should do the accountability of public office-holders only. He said the NAB had been posing one of the major obstacles in the way of business community in the country.

He said the government of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf had come to power last year at the most difficult time but several successes had been achieved in this regard during the last one year.

“I have been repeatedly asked to explain our own achievements but the thing is that I will not let you forget till the year 2023 in what state we had inherited Pakistan. Till 2023, I’ll keep reminding you how much deficit we had inherited for a just comparison as we didn’t inherit an economy of a country like Sweden,” he said. He said that his government had inherited the total debt of Rs30 trillion when it had come to power.

The PM said that wise steps initiated by his government had enabled the country to improve its position by 28 points in the “Ease of Doing Business” ranking of the World Bank. In the previous year Pakistan had lost its position by 28 points in the same ranking.

The PM said that he himself and his entire economic team were always willing to hold first hand interactions with the business community to directly resolve their problems.

He said it was necessary that businesses should flourish for the sake of Pakistan and investors should earn reasonable profits after doing investment in Pakistan. He said it was unfortunate that after the decade of 1960s under the socialist mindset, which had been prevailing at that time, profit earning by the business community had been deemed as a crime. He said that there should always been differentiation between profiteering and profit earning because that difference was no more in existence at that time.

He said that the upcoming year 2020 would be the year of the growth of economy as the passing year 2019 was the year dedicated to stabilizing the national economy and to saving it from utter crash and default. He said that if in case the national economy was not stabilised and allowed to be crashed, then people had to massively suffer due to serious price-hike and inflation. The PM said that the tourism industry of the country carried massive potential to turnaround the national economy and to provide prospects for massive job creation.

“To give an example, Switzerland earns 80 billion dollars every year through tourism alone while the size of our Northern Areas alone is more than double of Switzerland,” he said.

He said the tourism industry of the country had already started flourishing as people from inside the country didn’t find a place to stay in the hilly areas during the peak season of vacations and this potential would massively grow once the government would properly start building tourist resorts. He said that expatriate Pakistanis would also start visiting the tourist resorts of the country as the sandy beaches of Makran coast carried great potential in this regard which was yet to be explored.