Skip to main content

After talks failure, traders down shutters across country

ISLAMABAD: The trader community observed a shutterdown strike throughout the country on Tuesday to protest measures in the budget designed to document their transactions, with wide swathes of urban markets heeding the strike call.

During the day talks between the government and the trader community broke down, ending hopes of an early end to the strike.

The markets are expected to largely remain closed on Wednesday (today) too, as a cluster of five traders’ associations has called for a two-day protest against the recently introduced measures aimed at widening the tax net and ensuring that retailers pay their taxes.

The strike coincided with the launch of the anti-government ‘Azadi march’ by the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl.

The strike call was given after the failure of a round of negotiations between the traders’ leaders and the authorities, led by the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh and Federal Board of Revenue chairman Shabbar Zaidi.

PM’s financial adviser asks businessmen to stop avoiding paying taxes as latter warn of more strikes

After the inconclusive talks, Dr Shaikh criticised traders for not paying their taxes, pointing out that out of 3.5 million traders, only 392,000 were in the tax net.

Islamabad saw patchy observance of the strike, but traders in Rawalpindi were able to give a powerful message of unity as all main commercial hubs there kept their shutters down throughout the day.

By and large Punjab responded well to the strike call as traders kept their businesses closed in most of the markets and shopping centres on the call of All Pakistan Anjuman-i-Tajiran (APAT).

“We straightaway reject the ‘IMF’s agenda in the country’. Since the government is playing ‘meeting-meeting’ with us, we warn it to either accept our demands or face more shutterdown strikes in the near future,” said Ashraf Bhatti, APAT’s president, at a protest camp in Lahore. Businessmen kept their shops closed in a majority of the markets.

In Multan, most of the markets remained closed and in Faisalabad traders observed strike in the cloth, jewellery, hosiery and yarn markets. However, there was a partial strike in all eight bazaars of Clock Tower.

Traders’ representatives reported that the strike was observed in most markets in Vehari, Dera Ghazi Khan, Sargodha, Muzaffargarh, Okara, Sialkot, Toba Tek Singh and Gujranwala.

In Sindh, trade centres, main markets and bazaars, shopping malls and business establishments remained closed in all big and small cities, except Karachi where various trade associations’ representatives, who on Monday had claimed to have come on the same page over closure of the markets, suffered a setback as some major markets remained open throughout the day.

In Karachi, the majority of markets observed the strike as the hub of wholesale and retail trade all along M.A. Jinnah road remained shut.

But markets in Korangi, Landhi and Malir only partially answered the strike call.

Anis Majeed, patron-in-chief of the Karachi Wholesale Grocers Association, said traders had never wanted to close their businesses, but were now forced to shut them down due to the cumbersome method of tax collection through a documentation process which cannot be done overnight.

Neighborhood markets, such as the Hyderi Market in North Nazimabad, and two main markets of F.B. Area, (Water Pump and Karimabad), and most of Liaquatabad markets were doing normal business.

A large portion of Saddar around Empress Market as well as Clifton and Defence areas were also open.

In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, businessmen observed the strike in the provincial capital Peshawar and other districts of the province.

All shopping centres in Peshawar remained closed as the traders’ leaders frequently visited different areas to ensure success of the protest.

A partial strike was observed in other cities of the province where some shops and markets were closed while others remained open.

Meanwhile, a complete shutterdown strike was observed across Balochistan, including Quetta, where all bazaars, shops, business centres, plazas, markets and business establishments remained closed throughout the day.

The shopping areas of the provincial capital presented a deserted look as most vehicles remained off the roads.

The strike was also observed in Dera Murad Jamali, Sibi, Hub, Dera Allahyar, Khuzdar, Kalat, Zhob, Loralai, Chaman, Pishin, Turbat, Gwadar, Panjgur, Dalbandin, Noshki and other cities of the province. However, on the outskirts of Quetta city some shops opened in the afternoon.

Published in Dawn, October 30th, 2019



from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2WwM7MM
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Trump says he urged team to ‘slow’ COVID-19 testing

US President Donald Trump said Saturday he was encouraging health officials in his administration to slow down coronavirus testing, arguing that increased tests lead to more cases being discovered. The president has claimed falsely on several occasions that surges of COVID-19 in several states can be explained by greater numbers of diagnostic tests. At his first rally since the outbreak forced nationwide shutdowns in March, Trump told the crowd in Tulsa, Oklahoma that testing was a “double-edged sword.” The United States — which has more deaths and cases than any other country — has carried out more than 25 million coronavirus tests, placing it outside the top 20 countries in the world, per capita. “Here is the bad part: When you do testing to that extent, you are going to find more people, you will find more cases,” Trump argued. “So I said to my people ‘slow the testing down.’ They test and they test.” It was not clear from Trump’s tone if he was playing to the crowd, who ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sir Anwer Pervez, richest Pakistani British businessman, loses £432m in pandemic

Sir Anwar Pervez OBE, the founder and chairman of Bestway Cash & Carry has lost £432 million during the coronavirus pandemic to bring him down to No 50 on the richest British people list. The list has 1,000 people and is published by the Sunday Times newspaper . Pervez was at No 42 previously.  The 2020 list of the UK’s richest shows its first fall in wealth in a decade as Britain’s wealthiest people lost tens of billions of pounds in the coronavirus pandemic, the Sunday Times reported in its Rich List 2020. The newspaper, which has produced the respected annual ranking of the country’s 1,000 wealthiest people since 1989, found the past two months had resulted in the super-rich losing £54 billion ($65 billion). More than half of the billionaires in Britain had seen drops in their worth by as much as £6b, a decrease in their collective wealth unprecedented since 2009 and the financial crisis. The Hinduja brothers, who topped last year’s list with a £22b fortune, saw among ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Despite reservations about jury, Pakistan to implement FATF reforms: envoy

WASHINGTON: Despite its reservations about the fairness of the jury which is to determine Pakistan’s performance against terror financing, the government is committed to implementing its action plan for dealing with this issue, says Islamabad’s Washington envoy Asad Majeed Khan. In a conversation with a prominent US scholar George Perkovich, recorded at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington on Monday afternoon, Ambassador Khan said the actions that Pakistan had taken so far to eliminate terror financing were “reflective of the political will”. “We feel that we have done a lot. We are also clear and determined to do more,” said the envoy while responding to a question about a meeting of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) held in Orlando last week, which asked Pakistan to implement its own action plan for eliminating terror financing by October. Failing to do so could put Pakistan on a blacklist of violators and bring strict economic sanctions too. “But we w...
Post a Comment
Read more