Cabinet decisions

THE Federal Cabinet meeting, under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani at Islamabad on Wednesday, took a host of far-reaching decisions. To curb the rising trend of imports in response to the serious balance-of-payment problems the country is at present facing, it imposed an additional regulatory duty of a varying percentage (15 to 50) on 379 items, besides obliging the entrepreneurs to pay, at the time of opening letters of credit, the amount in full in foreign exchange of the value of goods they wanted to import, rather than depositing the mere 10 to 30 percent they were doing till Tuesday. The impact of the imposition of the additional duty on items of daily use ('luxury goods' in official terminology) would not remain confined to only imported goods; finding increased demand for locally manufactured substitutes, the trading community would automatically raise the prices of their wares as well. With items like washing machines, refrigerators and even cellphones no longer considered luxury possessions, the rise in their prices would make life harder for the general public.