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Stock exchange, agriculture, real estate to be taxed: Tareen  

Thursday, April 30, 2009

ISLAMABAD: The stock exchange, and the agriculture and real estate sectors will be brought under the tax net within the next three years, Finance Adviser Shaukat Tareen said on Wednesday. Talking at a reception by the Federation of Pakistan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the finance adviser said the manufacturing sector was overburdened with taxes, therefore the tax net had to be expanded to bridge the revenue-expenditure gap in the future.He said electricity tariff for industrial and commercial consumers would facilitate the sectors, assuring the industrialists that the government would try to equitably burden various segments of the society to meet the revenue requirements for national development.Tareen said the government was collecting a higher Petroleum Development Levy (PDL) on petroleum oil and lubricant (POL) products to bridge the revenue shortfall, which had occurred due to a slowing down in the manufacturing sector and in dutiable imports.The finance adviser said currently the government’s major expenditures related to defence, debt servicing and development. The government would place all the facts before a judicial commission formed by the Supreme Court to analyse POL prices, Tareen said. He said a reduction in inflation was the government’s prime target.

by Farooq