Murad Ali Shah chairs Sindh's preparatory meeting for NFC session

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Monday chaired a preparatory session for the National Finance Commission (NFC) meeting here, ARY News reported.

Provincial Chief Secretary, Secretary Finance and other concerned officials attended the meeting.

Murad Ali Shah complained that Sindh receives delayed payments of its share of the NFC Award.

Chief Minister Shah said that Sindh has its own sources of generating revenues, which are being enhanced by the government. He said the province generates 16 percent non-tax income.

Sindh also generates 20% of infrastructure development, 26% of General Sales Tax (GST) on services and 22 percent of the province income, Murad Ali Shah said.

He said the federal government gave four billion rupees to Sindh in Year 2006 in respect of GST on services, seven billion rupees in 2009 and Rs. 17 billion in 2010. Sindh itself started collection of the sales tax from Year 2011 and generated over 28 billion rupees, which reached to 100 billion rupees in 2017.

The chief minister said that the province enhanced its development budget by 18.1 percent from Year 2012 to 2017.

He said that the Sindh government wants to collect sales tax on goods. He suggested that the central government should give a collection target of sales tax to provinces, which collect the tax on behalf of the federal government and deliver the amount to it after deduction of service charges.