Karachi – United Business Group (UBG) has termed the federal budget 2023-24 as a harmful budget for IT sector, youth, benefits of government employees and industry. United Business Group President Zubair Tufail, Chairman Sindh Region Khalid Tawab, Secretary General (Sindh) Hanif Gohar said that it is a reasonable budget to some extent when the government does not have the resources, then what can it give a better budget than this, but we can also call it an election budget. He said that instead of increasing the tax net, the burden on the tax payers was increased, some concessions were given to the agriculture sector, which are commendable, while the concessions given to the IT sector were better, thereby strengthening the IT sector. Zubair Tufail said that no measures have been taken to increase the tax net, but the pressure has been maintained on those who already pay taxes. Taxes are taken from the independent and salaried class, which is cruelty. Increasing the salaries of government employees is a right step by the government, but the salary of the laborer was required to be increased to 40,000. The measures taken will help to overcome the power crisis, withholding tax on non-filers has been re-imposed which will increase the revenue of the government, sales tax on cooking oil will be abolished, ghee will be cheaper, tax on used clothes. Abolition of is a better decision, it will give ease to the poor class.
Khalid Tawab said that apparently this is an election budget because this budget cannot be called business friendly, by getting tax exemptions for solar technology related items, alternative electricity will be available to people and will help in overcoming the electricity crisis.
Hanif Gohar said that we will have to take loans from the beginning because the government has not taken any steps to meet the deficit, the government’s tax target is 9200 billion rupees but the expenses are much more than that, it is a disappointing budget for the industrial sector. He said that better opportunities have been given in the budget for the youth, this budget is good for the IT sector, but the question arises as to where the money will come from to pay the interest of 7300 billion rupees because the economy is not running, there is no export. In such a situation that the industries are not functioning, the government has brought back the super tax even though the tax payers were already under pressure to pay the tax.
