ISLAMAABD: Pakistan is all set to have a wonderful quick registration (QR) ‘Track& Trace Technology regime for real-time monitoring of activity of all major industrial sectors of the national economy.
Iskander A Khan, chairman Poly Propylene industry, has installed QR Track & Trace Technology in his poly proplene unit to help the government understand its advantage and use it to eliminate tax evasion of hundred of billions of rupee from industrial sector.
Iskander A Khan has proposed prime minister, Imran Khan, to implement his suggested QR Track& Trace system through a letter to put an end to the culture of tax evasion from industrial sector.
QR Track & Trace Technology will connect the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) system with each industrial unit to have real-time data of production and its sale to the buyers.
Since QR prints a code on each bag of production it enables FBR and other government departments to have exact statistics of production and details of sale of the industrial unit.
With implementation of QR Track& Trace Technology, each bag produced by any industrial unit could easily be tracked and traced to check any wrong reporting of any industrial unit.
The new monitoring system of QR Track& Trace Technology will eliminate under production and subsequent eliminate tax evasion from industrial sector once for all.
With implementation of Track and Trace system, Pakistan may get a benefit of Rs 500 billion per annum in terms of enhanced revenue collection as it will plug- off chronic tax evasion from industrial sector.
Lack of a proper and effective monitoring system of industrial activity has caused Pakistan huge loss in terms of tax evasion, besides providing a window to almost all major industrial sectors of the economy to conceal exact production and sale of the finished products and indulge in tax evasion.
For example, there was so reliable data with the government of any major industrial sector like sugar, cement, fertilizer, rice and many others to have a clear picture of its industrial production. This loose system caused double lose to the country. On one hand, the government had no reliable data of any industrial sector to have a diligent policy- making. Secondly, it had no statistics as to what was exact production of a particular industrial sector and how much it was paying to the national kitty in the form of taxes. This situation pushed the country into a loose rather poor system of governance.
Complaints of tax evasion by industrial sector is as old as history of Pakistan. For decades, tax evasion had been a teething challenge for Pakistan’s economic policy makers for decades. .Tax evasion of Industrial sector being a grey area had been a cause of concern for multi- national donors like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Respected governments made efforts time to time to have some solution to the problem of tax evasion of industrial sector and they made serious attempts to address the irritating issues through some workable strategy, but these efforts did not bring any meaningful solution to it.
Implementation of proposed Track& Trace Technology will add roughly Rs 400 billion to 500 billion in revenue of the government besides making Pakistan’s monitoring of industrial sector activities up to international standard.
