Businessmen urge PM to freeze ‘controversial tax’ as bills run into tens of millions of rupees
KARACHI:
The Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) and the seven industrial city associations and textile exporting bodies, while expressing deep concern over the exorbitant and retrospective gas bills, have urged the prime minister and ministers of the petroleum and energy division to take urgent note of the “anti-industrial measure” that threatens to close factories, cripple exports and turn Pakistan in an import dependent economy.
At a joint press conference at the KCCI on Thursday, business leaders asked the government to immediately freeze the controversial tax levied retrospectively for four months, which has raised gas bills from millions to tens of millions of rupees, an unbearable burden for industrial companies.
Businessmen Group (BMG) Chairman Zubair Motiwala, who participated in the press conference via Zoom, recalled that during Pervez Musharraf’s tenure, industries had been encouraged to set up captive power plants (CPPs) to overcome the power crisis, with a clear guarantee that gas would be supplied to them.
However, he lamented that the recent increase in gas tariffs, coupled with heavy taxes and levies, has made captive power generation unsustainable, turning the billions of rupees invested in these plants into complete waste.
“It seems that the IMF wants to turn us into an import-oriented economy,” he said, asking the government to compare the cost of doing business for Pakistan with those of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The textile sector, which comprises seven stages of manufacturing, depends on energy at each level. “When energy costs are much higher than Bangladesh, how can we compete? Give ourselves the same cost of doing business, if we still fail, hold ourselves accountable,” he emphasized.
Motiwala condemned the imposition of a tax of Rs 791 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) on CPPs, introduced on the pretext of cost difference with grid electricity. “There really is no such difference,” he said.
