ISLAMABAD - The Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industries has regretted the ignoring of horticulture sector in the federal budget and said that the allocation and incentives for the agriculture sector were not likely to yield positive impact on growers in the short term.
Talking to media, FPCCI Regional Chairman on Horticulture Exports Committee Ahmad Jawad said more or less the same budget allocation was announced for the growers, even though the horticulture sector expected some concrete relief.
He said that no incentives were given on horticulture exports in the budget. The sector requires strong attention of the government as despite having huge potential Pakistan’s horticulture export share in the international market was only 0.3 percent. The government should understand that horticulture sector has the potential to increase exports and it should be facilitated.
He said they were expecting announcement of incentives to establish cool chain and value addition infrastructure to increase exports of fresh fruits and vegetables. The government has Rs 1 trillion PSDP, but surprisingly no horticulture project is considered worthy of getting financing.
He said that they reject the proposal to increase the withholding tax rate on non-filers, as this move would affect all the traders. Until and unless proper tax reforms with the objective of facilitating the tax payers are not under taken the tax compliance will not increase.
However, Jawad appreciated the government decision to cut the markup rate at the rate of 9.9 pc up to 12.5 acres of land including revised the agriculture credit of Rs 1000 billion through ZTBL and NBP.
He said the rates of Urea and DAP fertilizer were likely to remain unchanged as announced in last year budget. Even the tubewell tariff has been retained at Rs 5.35 per unit like last year budget. The reduction of sale tax on DAP from Rs 400 to Rs 100 is a welcome move.
The zero percent duty on used imported agriculture machinery is a good step for the farmers who are interested to import that as well as agriculture diesel engines (from 3 to 36 HP) have also been given exemption from sales tax, he said.
He also called for exempting all agriculture input from sales tax. It is sheer injustice that farmers have to pay huge amount of tax on basic function of farming. He said that no announcement was made in the budget to cover the import export gap, which seems that next year our export performance would be poor.