KARACHI:President FPCCI Irfan Iqbal Sheikh has expressed his concern over the lack of facilitation and fair environment to the distributors and merchants of industrial raw materials which play an indispensable role in export growth and import substitution.
He was speaking at a session with large-scale merchants from the platform of Pakistan Chemical and Dyes Merchants Association at the Federation House, said FPCCI press release on Thursday.
Irfan Iqbal Sheikh said the chemical merchants must be brought into normal tax regime instead of its current status of being in the minimum tax regime for the past two years; when it was removed from final tax regime. He also proposed that for fighting the menace of flying invoices in the sector, the condition of customer CNIC copy should be exempted and the turnover tax should be brought down to 1 percent immediately; from the current level of 1.25 percent. Going forward, it should be brought down to 0.5 percent gradually, he added.
FPCCI Chief explained that the traders and middlemen in the industrial raw material supply chain must be facilitated as those were the ones that helped keep the wheel of industrial production running, support export-oriented industries to meet consignment deadlines, assist to establish new industries and contribute to preserving precious foreign exchange reserves through import substitution.
FPCCI Chief emphasized that the state institutions had been neglecting the merchants of industrial raw materials but, in fact, they should be much more facilitated than those of the importers of luxury goods like cars, mobile phones, branded clothing, high-end food products, etc.
Chairman of Pakistan Chemical and Dyes Merchants Association Kamran Riaz Bharara mentioned that the imposition of 4.5 percent withholding tax on the sales by the middlemen in the supply chain of the industrial raw materials– who buy from the commercial importers – is counterproductive as it raises the cost of doing business and squeezes the profit margins even further. This is also a substantive impediment in the government’s policy to establish a robust, efficient and reliable supply chain for the industries.