- Finmin claims that efforts are made to reduce the spending on states.
- Adds the country’s economy evolving towards stability.
- “The separate tax policy of the FBR and placed in the Ministry of Finance.”
Peshawar: Muhammad Aurangzeb Minister of Finance and Revenues said on Wednesday that the government planned to close more departments within the framework of a “rights” exercise focused on international monetary funds aimed at reducing state spending.
“Efforts are made to reduce state spending … We are closing more departments and joint departments,” the financial tsar said during the fight against the business world in Peshawar.
The federal government has formulated a rights program by eliminating various ministries and their services attached to reducing spending and improving government efficiency.
In January, Aurangzeb promised rights of 42 ministries and their 400 departments attached by June 30 for the current financial year, adding that the Rights Committee would reduce 80 institutions to half.
“60% of regular vacant vacancies – which did not come in salary – which stood at 150,000 were abolished or declared dying messages, creating a real financial impact,” he said.
Recently, the federal government abolished the Ministry of Aviation and merged it at the Ministry of Defense. Thanks to this merger, the government looked at an economy of 145 million rupees per year.
Addressing the participants of the Peshawar Chamber of Commerce today, the Minister of Finance said that it was the government’s work to formulate a policy and pursue it.
“The country’s economy is evolving towards stability,” said Aurangzeb, noting that the country gives positive results thanks to the economic measures taken by the government.
In addition, he said, the government was taking comments from the business world for the upcoming budget, promising to continue supporting all sectors of all provinces.
Regarding tax collection, Aurangzeb said they were taking measures to reduce human intervention at the Federal Bureau of Rété (FBR) via modern technology, including artificial intelligence. “When human intervention decreases, leaks will decrease-which is a softer word to say corruption,” he added.
“A structural step that we have taken is that the tax policy has been withdrawn from the FBR and placed in the Ministry of Finance,” he added.
To comply with the conditions of the IMF, the government has separated the tax policy from the tax collection organization and informed the creation of the Tax Policy Office (TPO), led by the Minister of Finance.
The government has separated the FBR political wing from the operations agreed with the IMF and placed it at the Ministry of Finance. However, this process will take a few months, so that the placement of the political wing of the Ministry of Finance could become operational from the next financial year 2025-2026, The news reported.
According to the notification, the tax policy will provide support for the analysis of tax policies and proposals through the modeling of data, income and economic forecasts as well as international taxation and tax obligations.
The Tax Policy Office will fall directly from the Minister of Finance. The staff of the said office approved by the federal office are undertaken with the approval of the division of the establishment and the finance division in accordance with the general conditions prescribed by the government.
Finine meets the KP financial advisor
In addition, the Minister of Finance held a meeting with the finance advisor to the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Muzzammil Aslam in Peshawar. The meeting was also followed by the Minister of State in Finance Alis Pervez Malik, the Minister of the Accis of KP, Khaleeq Ur Rahman, and the chief secretary of KP, Shahab Ali Shah.
On this occasion, Aurangzeb congratulated the KP government for the implementation of the national tax pact and agricultural income tax.
He assured the provincial government to revise his concerns concerning the Prix of the National Finance Commission (NFC), noting that they wanted to work with all the provinces.
Meanwhile, Aslam said that the Center had arrested funds for districts merged within the framework of the accelerated implementation program (AIP) and the annual development program (ADP). “The district merged obtained 66 billion rupees in the current budget, while spending is close to 104 billion rupees,” he added.
The financial advisor called to make provisional arrangements from the NFC sentence to meet the expenses of the merged districts. He also asked Aurangzeb to settle questions related to the next budget with the provinces in advance.
In addition, he asked that the provinces be taken with confidence in advance on the application of taxes, wage and retirement issues.