MIRPUR (AJK) - Inviting Pakistani and Kashmiri expats to invest in trade and tourism sectors in AJK, President Sardar Masood Khan has said that the overseas Kashmiri community has always proved a valuable asset for the country.

The president made these comments while interacting with a 12-member delegation of overseas Kashmiris from Europe on Monday.

The participants hailing from various walks expressed their keen interest in investing in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, especially in the real-estate sector, infrastructure development, agriculture, livestock and power production projects. They said that the overseas community wanted encouragement to come and invest here. They requested that one-window services may be provided and a similar conducive environment is provided to them to help boost their confidence.

Sardar Masood thanked the overseas delegation for the passion and interest they displayed in investing in Pakistan and Kashmir. He said that being a great asset for our nation, the facilitation of the overseas community has always been the top priority of the AJK government. He said issues discussed impeding investments in AJK are under consideration and every effort will be made to help facilitate investors.

The president informed that under the current government, both the AJK Board of Investment and the Overseas Commission are being made more active in order to directly cater to the needs of the overseas Kashmiris. He said that the young generation of overseas Kashmiris will be given a chance to explore investment opportunities in incubation centers and startup centers in public sector universities of AJK in Muzaffarabad and Mirpur.

President Masood said that diversified investment opportunities will be explored especially in the tourism sector, extraction industry and the software houses. The president also paid tribute to the Pakistani-Kashmiri community for raising their voices against the grave human rights violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir.

AJK inland revenue dept achieves target in 9 months

Azad Jammu & Kashmir State Department of Inland Revenue successfully achieved the stipulated target of the collection of levies during the first three quarters of the ongoing fiscal year of 2018-19 official sources said.

Independent observers related to the field have termed it a major breakthrough in tax-realisation history of AJK by the tax realizing agency currently running under the auspices of Azad Government of the State of Jammu & Kashmir.  It appeared after the AJK Inland Revenue Department has shown the remarkable performance by surpassing the assigned budgetary targets by giving unprecedented increase of more than 20 percent.

Unveiling the break-up of the successful realisation of the target of the levies with attractive surplus volume of amount during 3rd quarter of the ongoing fiscal year 2018-19, Commissioner Inland Revenue AJK Sardar Zaffar Mahmood Khan, also head of the department, told on Monday that the overall budgetary target of Rs22760 million has been assigned to the Inland Revenue Department for the financial year 2018-2019.

The target, Zaffar continued assigned for first three quarters of current financial year for direct taxes was equivalent to Rs10,660 million, against which the Department managed to collect  revenue of Rs11,288 million with significant increase of Rs622.169 million.

“The AJK government had fixed the target of provincial taxes at Rs4,235 millions for first three quarters of current financial year, whereas collection was equivalent to Rs 4,336 million. It means that there was an increase of Rs101 million,” the commissioner said.