When a state gives subsidies, it basically means giving any individual or group selective preferential treatment, which may be waiving or giving relief in taxation or giving state lands to individuals, below the market price, with permission to sell it for profit, or provision of basic food items and energy at below the cost incurred, etc. |
Pakistan is facing an acute financial crisis, facing the threat of default, and is seeking to avert this by submitting to IMF conditionalities in order to evade bankruptcy. We need to increase revenues through exports, which is only possible if productive investment in industries is encouraged and not by discouraging it, by giving incentives to the real estate sector with low taxation and other benefits. Several industries have closed down and land given by the state at subsidized rates for their construction has been converted to commercial plazas and shopping malls which offer subsidized tax concessions.
Not levying a Sin Tax on cigarettes to discourage their sales and consumption and covering the exorbitant rise in providing medical care for cancer and other related infections is giving the industry a criminal subsidy.
Pakistan’s economy is basically agro-based and any decision or exemption given by the state to disrupt the system of supply-chain causes, hunger, death and suffering for millions.
MALIK TARIQ ALI,
Lahore.