{"id":39568,"date":"2024-06-13T14:05:25","date_gmt":"2024-06-13T09:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/?p=39568"},"modified":"2024-06-13T18:09:11","modified_gmt":"2024-06-13T13:09:11","slug":"staff-level-agreement-with-imf-likely-in-july-says-finance-minister-in-post-budget-presser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/business\/staff-level-agreement-with-imf-likely-in-july-says-finance-minister-in-post-budget-presser\/","title":{"rendered":"Staff-level agreement with IMF likely in July, says finance minister in post-budget presser"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday said that positive progress has been seen in a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).<\/p>\n<p>Addressing a post-budget press conference in Islamabad, Fiannace czar said the government is expecting a staff-level agreement with a global lender in July this year.<\/p>\n<p>The federal minister was accompanied by the State Minister for Finance, Ali Pervaiz Malik, the Secretary of Finance, Imdad Ullah Bosal, and the Chairman Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), Amjad Zubair Tiwana.<\/p>\n<p>A day earlier, the Finance Minister presented a <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/business\/budget-2024-25-non-filers-to-face-additional-withholding-tax-on-property-transactions\/\">tax-oriented budget<\/a> proposal of <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/business\/live-federal-govt-presents-budget-2024-25-amid-ruckus-in-national-assembly\/\">Rs18.8776 trillion<\/a> for Fiscal Year 2024-35.<\/p>\n<p>Taking to the media, he said that the federal govt aims to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio to 13 percent in the next three years, from the current one of more than 9pc. &#8220;Our basic principles while framing this budget are to expand the tax base. This sub-10pc tax-to-GDP ratio is simply not sustainable.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1Gg2gr9WQT0?si=DxJg0IuEr1Sk4Rod\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Aurangzeb underscored the importance of doing away with the undocumented economy with end-to-end digitization to reduce human intervention as much as possible and make the tax mechanism transparent and mitigate chances of corruption. The minister admitted that the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) could not do compliance and enforcement to the extent it should have done.<\/p>\n<p>He said the government had introduced progressive taxes in the federal budget for the upcoming fiscal year 2024-25 to impose more tax on high-income earners.<\/p>\n<p>He said, the country needed to move on the direction of broadening its tax base to make the economy sustainable. Therefore, it was imperative to bring into tax net the retailers and wholesalers to share the burden.<\/p>\n<p>The government had launched a tax scheme for retailers and wholesalers and they were offered registration on a volunteer basis, however, it was termed unsuccessful, he added.<\/p>\n<p>Later, in May 2024, the minister added, the FBR workforce mobilized itself, which resulted in the registration of around 31,000 retailers with the scheme to date.<\/p>\n<p>To a question about the Petroleum Development Levy (PDL), the minister said it would be increased gradually and in accordance with international oil prices. The minister said that the exemption and 35% category of salary slabs were intact, adding that there was a change in other slabs falling between. He said the government took up tax for non-salaried persons up to 45 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Federal finance minister said that the country\u2019s IT exports stand at $ 3.5 billion which could be lifted up to $7 billion provided an enabling environment is given to youth. He admitted that proper financing was not provided to SMEs because banks have no appetite for them and assured that banks would now come up with specific schemes, in three sectors including agriculture, IT, and SMEs.<\/p>\n<p>Talking about PSDP priorities, the minister said that the government had focused on completing ongoing projects therefore 81 percent allocations were made for these schemes while only 19 percent was allocated for new schemes, which included important projects and those that have foreign funding.<\/p>\n<p>Finance Minister Senator Muhammad Aurangzeb said that the government was determined to plug the tax leakages and has initiated end-to-end digitization of the revenue collection system to minimize human intervention; end harassment and improve tax compliance culture in the country.<\/p>\n<p>He said that despite fiscal constraints, the government had enhanced the budgetary allocation of the Benazir Income Support Programme and subsidy for the power sector for the safety of protected consumers, adding that the minimum wage was increased.<\/p>\n<p>Chairman Federal Board of Revenue clarified that there was no increase in the tax on DAP fertilizer, adding that tax on imported tractors was enhanced by 10 percent as the locally manufactured tractors were levied about 18 percent tax and the imposition of tax on the imported tractors were aimed at making the product competitive in local market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb on Thursday said that positive progress has been seen in a staff-level agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Addressing a post-budget press conference in Islamabad, Fiannace czar said the government is expecting a staff-level agreement with a global lender in July this year. The federal minister was accompanied by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":39572,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18476,4,13446],"tags":[13173,18552,18551],"class_list":["post-39568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-budget-2024-25","category-business","category-featured","tag-finance-minister-muhammad-aurangzeb","tag-imf-agreement","tag-post-budget-press-conference"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyausaf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}