The government will make all-out efforts to address three to four outstanding issues, including tax harmonisation, for securing loans worth over $800 million from the World Bank in the next one month.
Pakistan has already received $400m for reforms in tax administration out of a total of $1.2 billion loans of the World Bank, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin told Dawn on Saturday. “We need this money and will take all prior actions,” he said.
On tax harmonisation, the minister said that he would hold a meeting with provincial finance ministers in the next seven to 10 days to resolve the outstanding issues. He said several meetings had already been held in this regard at the technical level.
According to a World Bank’s document, harmonisation involves an agreement among the federal government and the provinces to apply the same definitions, principles and rates for general sales tax (GST) on goods and services.
