FBR proposes two schemes to whiten 'black' money
04 October, 2012
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Wednesday submitted two amnesty schemes to the Finance Ministry for whitening undocumented assets and money for approval and to offer the affluent people to get their local and foreign assets legalised by declaring them by December 31.
ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Wednesday submitted two amnesty schemes to the Finance Ministry for whitening undocumented assets and money for approval and to offer the affluent people to get their local and foreign assets legalised by declaring them by December 31.
Briefing the Senate's Standing Committee on Finance, which met at the Parliament House with Senator Nasreen Jalil in chair, FBR member Asrar Rauf said that the names of those who would not be declaring their hidden or undocumented assets by the deadline would be included in defaulters lists, their computerised national identity cards (CNIC) and passports would be cancelled and their bank accounts would be seized.
These steps have been taken by the FBR to minimise the revenue gap of Rs 500-700 billion because of non-payment of taxes by the taxpayers, who particularly used different tools not to pay their taxes. These schemes are a kind of opportunity for the rich to get them registered as taxpayers and pay their due taxes for national development. These two schemes are expected to bring in to tax net a huge number of rich and expected revenue from these two schemes is estimated at Rs 196 billion.
He informed the committee that tax authorities have already identified 1.718 million families across the country, which has been found frequent foreign travellers and spending huge amounts on their utilities and other functions. These two schemes would allow such rich to legalize their hidden assets after paying Rs 40,000 and get themselves register as taxpayers.
The body was also informed that leading international financial institutions, including the World Bank (WB) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) seemed reluctant to fulfil the financial needs for 4500MW Diamer-Basha hydropower project, which could cause a long delay in completion of such a mega power project for 10 years. Sources said the federal government failed to arrange the sufficient financial arrangements either through its own resources or foreign lenders for the project, which produce a cause for international financial institutions (IFIs) to review their monetary policy for financing this huge project.
It was also revealed that the WB kept the envelop of $1.2 billion annually for Pakistan of total financing in developing countries, however, the Pakistani government demanded more than the capacity fixed by the bank.
The officials of Economic Affairs Division (EAD) officials maintained as quoting the WB that 4500MW project could face severe implications because of shortage in financing up to $9 billion.
Sources said that an amount of Rs 27.824 billion was required for the acquisition of land and resettlement of the people to be affected in the wake of the construction of the dam.
Under the proposed project, Rs 10.76 billion would be spent for the acquisition of land, tree and nurseries and Rs 1.638 billion to be utilised for properties and infrastructure, Rs 8.8 billion for establishment of nine model villages, Rs 62.119 million for pay and allowances for administrative arrangements, and Rs 17.7 million for contingent administrative expenses.
The project also includes an escalation cost of Rs 2.234 billion at the rate of 6 percent per year for five years and interest of Rs 4.309 billion during the implementation at the rate of 9 percent.
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