KARACHI: Muzzammil Aslam, a spokeswoman for the Finance Ministry, said on Saturday that the price of petroleum products in Pakistan would fall in the coming days.
The federal government raised the price of petrol by Rs4 per litre on the eve of the New Year to satisfy the International Monetary Fund’s petrol charge targets (IMF).
At a press conference, the spokesperson defended the government’s decision to levy more taxes totaling over Rs300 billion through the Finance Bill 2021, claiming that the multinational money lender had requested more.
“The IMF had requested that the government levy taxes worth Rs700 billion, but we only imposed levies worth Rs350 billion,” Aslam explained.
According to the spokesman, inflation is a global phenomena, and a similar situation occurred in 2008, which was a year of severe global economic crisis.
He also remarked that it was critical to examine inflation rates during the past six months, but that numerous financial sectors had performed well in the previous year.
The Finance Bill 2021, according to the spokeswoman, is not a “mini-budget,” as the opposition had labelled it. “We’re also putting an end to the needless tax breaks granted by previous administrations.”
Shaukat Tarin, the Federal Minister for Budget and Revenue, had described the Opposition’s criticism of the supplementary finance bill as “baseless” after it was unveiled on Thursday.
Tarin told a joint press conference, joined by Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib, that the law includes a tax reform worth Rs343 billion.
He said that the Rs70 billion rebate included taxes on luxury and business items such as imported fish, high-end bakery items, expensive cheese, and imported bicycles, as detailed in the supplementary finance bill, which was unveiled by the minister in the National Assembly before the press conference.
Personal computers, sewing machines, matchboxes, iodized salt, red chilies, and contraceptives will all lose their tax exemptions, totaling Rs2 billion.