LAHORE: The pharmaceutical sector has recently implied a rise in prices of medicines after the government imposed a General Sales Tax (GST) on raw materials for medicines in the mini-budget.
According to the reports, the sector had expressed reservations over the government's decision, saying that the weight of the sales tax would have to be borne by buyers.
Mian Zaka-ur-Rehman, an executive committee member of the Pakistan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (PPMA), informed that taxes imposed on the pharma sector have complicated things. He said that the main reason for it was that they hadn't charged any tax on the medicines sale before as they hadn't not been paying any sales tax while importing raw materials. However, if the industry were burdened with taxes, many medicines would become expensive, or their production would stop.
Mian Zaka opined that the government should allow the industry to raise the prices of medicines if it wanted to impose taxes on the import of raw materials.
Medicine and food being the necessities were subsidised all over the world. However, Zaka said, they were not asking for subsidies, yet our taxes were being increased for no reason.
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