Business
Govt to reduce tax on imported mobiles for next fiscal year
A lawmaker said that the National Assembly has included a number of adjustments in the Finance Bill for the next fiscal year to a certain extent decrease taxes on imported mobile phones.
The legislative measures follow a lengthy parliamentary debate after the original draft of the federal budget did not include recommended reforms of the nation’s heavily taxed telecoms sector.
The modifications did not include the extensive tax rollbacks sought by a parliamentary commission, but are a sign of a policy shift towards lowering the burden on mobile customers, said MNA Kasim Gilani.
“This is not enough, we know this, but still whatever has been done let’s take this for this year,” Gilani told foreign media. “We will cut next year, too.
“If a phone costs 200,000 rupees ($720), the tax on it right now was 106,000 rupees to be exact ,” Gilani said, adding that the parliamentary budget committee had urged in March that cellphones be classified as a necessity rather than a luxury asset.
When the main budget ignored these proposals, MPs had earlier this month invoked amendment provisions to take on the luxury GST rate of 25% as well as import obstacles prescribed by statute.
The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) after a long debate accepted changes in the final wording of the Finance Bill. Gilani said the government had agreed to remove 20 percent Regulatory Duty on all imported smart phones.
Second, the FBR has approved an adjustment for the mid-tier import bracket, which is for devices costing between $200 and $300, including highly saturated market segments. The concession will have revenue impact of around Rs1 billion ($3.6 million) on the states. The luxury GST rate of up to 25% remains applicable to high-end cellphones priced above $500, and the only respite in the current budget cycle is a 20% reduction in regulatory charge.
Lawmakers proposed an amendment in the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s (PTA) registration criteria that consumers will be able to pay charge in instalments to deal with the millions of handsets working outside the lawful cellular network.
“PTA can block the device of those who cannot pay the installment in any month, with a small penalty for re-activation,” Gilani recommended. “Make this plan to get more people into the tax net, get their devices registered.”
Business
Through HRMIS, the federal government digitizes 75% of civil servants’ service records.
– The federal government has digitized around 75 percent of service records of federal civil servants belonging to four occupational groups as part of a broader reform aimed at modernizing human resource management and reducing reliance on paper-based records.
Official documents presented to the Senate Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat, and available with Wealth Pakistan, show that the Establishment Division has made significant progress through the implementation of the Human Resource Management Information System (HRMIS) – a centralised digital platform for managing service records of officers belonging to the Pakistan Administrative Service (PAS), Police Service of Pakistan (PSP), Office Management Group (OMG), and Secretariat Group (SG).
According to the briefing, approximately 75 percent of service record data has already been entered into HRMIS, while the remaining records are being prioritized for digitization.
The Establishment Division is also carrying out a comprehensive verification and correction exercise to ensure the authenticity, completeness and accuracy of the data.
The digital platform contains officers’ personal profiles, postings, promotions, seniority, qualifications, training history, leave records, Performance Evaluation Reports (PERs) and other service-related information.
Officers have been provided access to review their records and submit correction requests, which are verified before system incorporation.
The Establishment Division informed the committee that there are no delays in the digitisation process due to manual record handling and that the current focus is on completing the remaining data entry and validation before the system becomes the government’s authoritative source for personnel management.
Once fully operational, HRMIS will serve as the single digital repository for service records, supporting promotions, transfers, training and other human resource functions.
The initiative is expected to improve efficiency, transparency, data integrity and evidence-based decision-making across the federal government.
Business
Pakistani, Bangladeshi firms sign vehicle export contract to increase bilateral trade
Pakistani car maker MG JW Automobile inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Bangladeshi conglomerate RANCON Group this week to export Pakistani cars to Bangladesh as both nations look to boost business-to-business (B2B) connections.
RANCON is a large corporate organization in Bangladesh and they are working in several sectors like vehicles, real estate and electronics. Under the deal, MG JW Automobile will sell 100 vehicles to Bangladesh during the current year while total shipments are expected to exceed 5,800 vehicles during the next four years, the Pakistan High Commission in Bangladesh announced on Friday.
“The deal is expected to benefit Bangladesh by increasing the availability of vehicles in the Bangladesh market, healthy competition and the consumers will get more choices at competitive prices,” the High Commission stated.
“The agreement will also lead to closer economic cooperation between Pakistan and Bangladesh and promote more business-to-business cooperation,” said the high commission.
Haroon Akhtar Khan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Industries and Production, praised the deal. He said he was confident such collaborations will improve trade and economic relations between the two countries and provide avenues for cooperation between the corporate sectors of the two countries.
Business
PSX makes huge gains to start the week on a positive note.
Pakistan’s stock market started the new trading week on a positive note as the benchmark KSE-100 Index jumped over 2,700 points in early trade on Monday after US President Donald Trump announced that he had begun talks with Iran.
The bull run took the KSE-100 Index to 178,985 points, signifying restored investor confidence and broad-based buying in the market.
The rally came after the index finished at 176,094 points at the end of the previous trading session.
Market watchers said the high gains were fueled by a better mood among global investors after the announcement of US-Iran talks helped to quell fears over regional tensions and increase optimism in financial markets.
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