NAB claims corruption amounts to Rs10-12 billion daily in Pakistan

Chairman National Accountability Bureau (NAB) Admiral (Retd) Fasih Bokhari on Thursday said corruption in Pakistan amounts to Rs10 to 12 billion daily.

Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, the chief of the accountability bureau said Pakistan is losing Rs7 billion in terms of tax evasion and another Rs6 to 7 million in direct corruption. He said that situation the same on both federal and provincial levels and the bureau is working to curb corruption in the country.

He said it is estimated Rs12 billion are siphoned off on daily basis because of corrupt practices while tax revenues worth Rs7 billion are evaded per day.

Issuing a corruption paper today, he said Pakistan has tax-to-GDP ratio is at 9 percent which could easily be  18 percent like in rest of the world, adding the country may annually receive 2500 billion rupees in taxes, i.e. Rs7 billion daily.

He said these include Agriculture sector GDP untaxed‚ revenue department‚ land grabbing and encroachments‚ loans‚ over staffing‚ ghost employment‚ wealth tax losses and duty draw backs. He said only in energy sector losses due to load shedding are approximately nine hundred sixty billion rupees per year.

Not three, there are only two pillars of state now in Pakistan, he said clarifying that a pillar consists of legislators and executives and the other one is judiciary. The legislators, he added, appoint the executives of their choice and such is happening on both federal and provincial levels.

He observed, “I have already said three months back that Pakistan is losing huge amount of money to corruption on daily basis. The fact that I’m doing fourth press conference in two months showed that the NAB is serious to root out corruption.”

He opined that tax revenues worth billion of rupees could be generated for the national exchequer by plugging loopholes in the system and stemming out corruption.

It is vital to mention here that the Federal Cabinet has already rejected the NAB report. Earlier, Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira questioned the basis of the findings, saying the federal government had a budget of about Rs3 trillion and its large part was used for salaries, debt retirement and defence purposes.

He made it clear that the statement that government was losing Rs7 billion on a daily basis is beyond our comprehension.

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Posted by Web Desk on Dec 13 2012. Filed under Latest News, National, Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.