Islamabad Chamber Of Commerce And Industry Urges MCI To Withdraw Trade License Fee

Fahad Shabbir (@FahadShabbir) Published February 24, 2020 | 09:14 PM

Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Muhammad Ahmed Waheed Monday urged the the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) to withdraw hike in trade license fee for small businesses to save them from troubles

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 24th Feb, 2020 ) :Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) President Muhammad Ahmed Waheed Monday urged the the Metropolitan Corporation Islamabad (MCI) to withdraw hike in trade license fee for small businesses to save them from troubles.

Addressing a meeting of ICCI District Municipal Administration Sub-Committee here, he said due to lack of relevant laws, rents of businesses were very high in Islamabad coupled with other trade expenses as compared to other cities.

He said the trade license fee for a certain business category was raised from Rs 25,000 to Rs 2.4 million per annum, and by thousand percent for others.

ICCI Senior Vice President Tahir Abbasi and Vice President Saif ur Rehman Khan said as per local government act, any proposal to increase tax should be first advertised in the press and then public hearing was arranged to hear the objections of stakeholders.

However, the MCI has not followed the procedure and raised the fee unilaterally, he claimed.

They said 40 union councils had representation in the MCI out of which 10 were from urban areas and rest 30 were from rural areas. The trade license fee was not enforced the in rural areas while the urban areas union councils opposed the hike in trade license fee.

They claimed that the MCI's move had created great concerns among the business community of Islamabad.