The Chairman of National Business Group Pakistan, the President of the Pakistan Businessmen and Intellectuals Forum, the President of All Karachi Industrial Alliance, the Chairman of the FPCCI Advisory Board, and the President and former provincial minister, Mian Zahid Hussain, said on Tuesday that despite promises of billions of dollars of investment by friendly countries, no practical results are visible.
He said that the local business community is also giving preference to investing abroad instead of in its own country, the main reasons being electricity and gas prices, high bank mark-ups, a slow judicial system, and a law-and-order situation.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that further improvement of the investment environment is necessary to increase the confidence of foreign and local investors and boost the economy rapidly.Talking to the business community, the veteran business leader said that the business environment is expected to improve in the next two months, which will increase foreign and local investment.If this expectation is fulfilled, it will be possible to increase the growth rate beyond three per cent in the next few years.
Mian Zahid Hussain said that the International Monetary Fund recently predicted that Pakistan’s growth rate would be up to three percent this year, while earlier, the same organization had estimated it to be 3.2 percent, which shows its disappointment about Pakistan. The business leader said that global concern due to the expected policies of the United States is increasing. The economic slowdown in Europe and the new US President’s announcements to increase revenue on exports from China and other countries may open up possibilities for promoting Pakistani exports, for which practical steps are needed.
The law and order situation in the country is also worrisome. The government does not have the capacity to increase imports indiscriminately, so increasing the growth rate through imports is not an option. Mian Zahid Hussain said that the tax system has not been improved for 77 years, and its target is the salaried class and the poor.
So, how can things move forward?Even now, about seventy per cent of taxes are indirect, which has burdened the people. According to the FBR chairman, the top five per cent of the wealthiest people in the country are liable for trillions of rupees in taxes. He asked how the country could run because Pakistan’s tax-to-GDP ratio is not even half of that of Mongolia, Mozambique, and Namibia.
Instead of trying new experiments, the FBR should completely digitalize the economy so taxes can be collected without scaring the taxpayers. Mian Zahid Hussain added that the government has made many reforms and improved things greatly, the results of which are also coming out, but investors will be interested only when they are satisfied with the reform process.
Investors think that if the process of necessary reforms remains slow, they will have to face losses. If investors are not satisfied, he warned that the government’s plan to increase the growth rate to six per cent and increase the size of the country's economy to $1 trillion will fail.
