President Asif Ali Zardari has summoned the National Assembly session on Tuesday (tomorrow).
“The National Assembly will meet on Tuesday at Parliament House at 1700 hours,” a President House press release said. The president summoned the session in exercise of the powers conferred on him under Article 54(1) of the Constitution.
In the last assembly session, the NA passed a resolution with a majority vote terming the June 25 resolution adopted by the US House of Representatives “an interference” in Pakistan’s internal affairs amid noisy protest by the opposition PTI members who voted against it.
The treasury members lashed out at the PTI members for opposing the resolution and called them “anti-state” and “traitors”.
The PTI members justified their act of opposing the resolution, stating they were not taken into confidence before presenting the resolution.
Moreover, the august house had passed the government’s tax-heavy finance bill for the coming fiscal year ahead of more talks on a new International Monetary Fund bailout.
The rise in the tax target is made up of a 48 per cent increase in direct taxes and a 35% hike in indirect taxes over revised estimates of the current year. Non-tax revenue, including petroleum levies, is seen increasing by a whopping 64%.
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In an interview with Financial Times, Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said that he was “relatively confident” that Pakistan would reach a staff-level agreement with the IMF this month for a loan that the government has estimated to be between $6-$8 billion.
However, Aurangzeb cautioned that this would not be Pakistan’s last IMF program if the country did not significantly increase its tax revenues.
