Unfortunately, the present government has not been able to win the confidence of the business community and the regulatory bodies in the country are being run with coercive colonial mindset instead of being facilitators for trade and investment initiatives in the country. Senior politician and former senator Afrasiab Khattak said this while presenting 'Shadow Budget for Financial Year 2017-18, on behalf of ANP at Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) here on Wednesday.
Afrasiab Khattak said that federal government has not fulfilled its constitutional obligation of presenting new National Finance Commission (NFC) Award since 2014. Therefore, ANP demands the government that new NFC Award should be finalised with the consultation of all the stakeholders as soon as possible; rights of the provinces were being denied by the federal government.
While presenting his political party's stance on taxation system, he said that ANP was in favour of direct and progressive taxation mechanisms. He said government must also address the black economy factor. He said the volume of black economy was huge and the FATA was the prime example of such an economy which is out of the sphere of tax net. He said the announcement of the FATA reforms was a welcome step but real issue is implementation and that need to be ensured.
Afrasiab said that allocations regarding defence budget needed to be more transparent and spending on social sector need to be increased, especially on health and education. He said that 'good and bad Taliban policy' of the state was a major obstacle to our economic growth and development. He said that the state had ignored the vision of the founding father of the country and deviation from his vision and policies resulted in a radicalised and intolerant society.
He said that the internalisation of 18th amendment was our major concern as the capacity of the provinces has not been developed. Our export policies have also been a failure due to lack of vision at planning level and hence, we have lost compatibility in regional and global markets.
The senior leader of the ANP said that planned urbanisation should have been our major priority but our cities are expanding without any planning. He went on to say that the mega projects were being implemented in Punjab and Sindh, whereas smaller provinces are being ignored. Hence, the government should pay more attention to backward and under developed areas of the country.-PR
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017