Anti-hoarding push puts brakes on runaway sugar price
According to Abdul Rauf Ibrahim, Chairman of the Wholesale Grocers Association, the retail price of sugar has dropped from Rs200 to Rs195/kg in recent days. Similarly, the wholesale price has fallen from Rs185 to a range of Rs178-180/kg.
Rauf attributed the price correction to growing scrutiny over speculative hoarding. He claimed that around 2.6 million tons of sugar are currently being held back from the market for profiteering and smuggling.
Rauf also cautioned against proposed sugar imports, saying that domestic production is sufficient to meet local demand. He warned that importing sugar at this stage would be economically detrimental, potentially costing the country more than $265 million in foreign exchange at a time of severe fiscal strain.
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Express Tribune
18 hours ago
- Express Tribune
PSX closes week up on optimism
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Business Recorder
2 days ago
- Business Recorder
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Express Tribune
3 days ago
- Express Tribune
IMF ties 4% tax removal to wider net
Listen to article Pakistan said on Thursday that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) did not allow it to abolish the additional 4% sales tax being collected from unregistered persons and instead linked the removal with a one-fourth increase in sales tax base. The supposedly punitive 4% extra tax is now a way of remaining outside the tax net as businesses feel comfortable with paying the additional tax and then recovering it through prices, instead of becoming part of the tax net. The IMF rejected a proposal to abolish 4% sales tax and asked to first register 50,000 more persons in the sales tax regime, said Dr Hamid Ateeq Sarwar, Member Inland Revenue Operations of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), during a meeting of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance. PPP Senator Saleem Mandviwalla chaired the meeting, which was convened to address concerns of the business community and recommend solutions. Mandviwalla supported efforts to discourage tax evasion and broaden the tax base. 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Faisalabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry President Rehan Bharara questioned whether the FBR used its earlier punitive powers, including the disconnection of electricity and gas supply. Out of 380,000 industrial connections and 5 million commercial connections, only 5% were in the name of current allottees, thus, they could not be disconnected, said Hamid Ateeq Sarwar. The low collection from retailers remains one of the concerns but the FBR on Wednesday made a surprising claim before Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif that it got an additional Rs455 billion from the retail sector in the last fiscal year. The claim requires independent verification as there are concerns that some of the corporate sector firms are also included in the retail category. Officials of the FBR claimed that total income tax payments made by the retail sector in fiscal year 2024-25 were in fact Rs617 billion and the additional income tax was Rs455 billion. 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Sarwar came down hard on business leaders, saying that in the past two years attempts were made for a whopping Rs2.2 trillion worth of sales tax fraud and the FBR registered FIRs against those people. "If anyone has doubt, we can arrange their meetings with these people in jail," he said.
