Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, and Economic Affairs, Asad Umar claimed to have traced 4000 illegal properties owned by Pakistanis in Dubai.
This he claimed while addressing an interactive session on Saturday with foreign investors who were members of Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OICCI). He further revealed that the authorities had also detected 95000 bank accounts of Pakistanis in 27 different countries. He expressed government’s resolve to improve tax collection machinery and said that FATF was a serious issue and there was hope of progress in January next year. He further said that Hundi and other illegal methods of bringing money had caused immense damage to the country.
The OICCI president Irfan Wahab Khan, highlighted ‘OICCI has always been vocal as FDI ambassadors of Pakistan and promoted the positive potential of the country for investment. OICCI members believe in Pakistan and have been significant investors as a group and in 2017 alone have made capital investment of around USD2.7 billion, and USD10.4 billion in past 6 years,’
Finance Minister Mr Asad Umar while appreciating the contribution of OICCI members termed them as ‘true ambassadors of Pakistan’. He said that they had talked about the opportunities in Pakistan at all international forums and had also invested heavily in the country over the years.
Finance Minister while sharing the salient points of the government’s economic recovery strategy, mentioned that the government was pursuing investment lead export oriented growth model and that all government actions in the short to medium term will be aligned to this strategy. Minister also briefed the OICCI members about the key highlights of the economic reform agenda.
Asad Umar agreed with OICCI recommendations that digitization, data analytics and data mining will be leveraged to leap frog the government efforts towards good governance and more importantly for broadening the tax base. Asad Umar confirmed that the country was out of the immediate balance of payment funding crisis and was working on a clear path for recovery and that the benefit of the revised economic strategy may be visible during the next six to nine months.
He also briefly shared the holding company model for rehabilitating the state-owned enterprises. He also referred to PM Khan’s visit to China and said that the government would soon engage the private sector in leveraging the benefits of CPEC by establishing manufacturing units in various sectors.
Finance Minister assured the OICCI members that their concerns on delayed tax refunds, higher circular debts and issues of delayed remittances would be attended to during the ongoing fiscal year
Irfan Wahab Khan, offered the government the foreign investor’s full support in promoting economic stability and FDI growth by providing technical assistance in the form of successful strategies which had worked internationally.
In this regard Irfan Khan informed that OICCI was soon going to share a comprehensive “OICCI Digital Pakistan” recommendations to lead the country into an era of digital and financial inclusion and good governance. The OICCI President also offered assistance to the government in improving the perception and positive branding of Pakistan.
The OICCI is the collective voice of all major foreign investors in Pakistan. Established over 157 years ago in 1860, the OICCI is today not only engaged in the promotion and protection of existing foreign investment in the country and to attract new foreign investors, its diversified activities contribute significantly to supporting commerce and industry across the country. The nearly 200 OICCI members, from 35 different countries, 50 of whom are associates of the 2018 Global Fortune 500 companies, have a presence in 14 sectors of the economy and contribute nearly one third of Pakistan’s total tax revenue and have assets of over $ 90 billion.
Published in Daily Times, November 11th 2018.
