Senators continue to oppose the RGST bill.
ISLAMABAD:?The Senate, under the chairmanship of Farooq H Naik, approved the recommendations on the Reformed General Sales Tax (RGST) bill on Friday.
Proposals?by the Standing Committee on Finance regarding?the RGST?were presented in the Senate session.?A report with the recommendations has been forwarded to the National Assembly for consideration.
The government ?faced tough opposition on the RGST bill by opposition parties as?debate on the bill continued in the Senate?on Friday.
The Federal Law Minister, Babar Awan, while talking to the media outside the Senate, presented the report, which includes the 15 recommendations by the Senate.
Awan said that everyone was given a fair chance in the proceedings while also criticizing the Senator Ahmed Ali, the chairman of the Senate’s the standing committee on finance, who had had earlier signed the bill but opposed it in the Senate session today.
Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh said that it was a historic step by the Senate to accept the bill, saying it would finally change the 20-year old system of taxes.
Shaikh said the parliament will now have to make tough decisions. He also thanked the finance committee, who he said had worked tirelessly for the past four days.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) senator Ishaq Dar said that had the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) not walked out of the session, the opposition could have blocked the recommendations from being approved.
According to Express 24/7 correspondent, Sabur Ali Syed, 11 senators belonging to JUI also submitted a resolution in the house saying that they would not support the bill because they believe it will add to the miseries of the common man.
Waseem Sajjad, the leader of the opposition in the house, tabled a resolution saying that the imposition of the RGST bill is going to hurt the interest of the common people and that the Senate should not pass any recommendations in favour of this bill, reported Sabur.
The RGST bill has been facing stiff opposition from senators over the past week. Chairman Senate Farooq H Naik however, had earlier said the House could make recommendations on the finance bill but its approval is not needed for passage of a bill.
Read the complete RGST bill here.
This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured article: Beyond Hiroshima - The Non-Reporting of Falluja's Cancer Catastrophe.
No comments:
Post a Comment