Market, license fee submission date extended

By Jawwad Rizvi

LAHORE: THE provincial Agriculture Marketing department has extended the date for submission of market and license fees and restricted officials concerned from recovering the same from outside the area of grain and fruits and vegetable markets, The News has learnt.
In a letter issued to Administrators/Secretaries Market Committees of the divisional headquarters of Lahore, Gujranwala, Sargodha, Faisalabad, Multan and Bahawalpur, special secretary of the Agriculture Marketing department has restricted the movement of inspectors and sub inspectors of the markets of these districts only to the notified areas of the markets.
The previous date for submission of the fees was October 31, which has been extended for three months.
The department has received a number of complaints about irregularities and harassments during the recovery process of the fees from traders and dealers working outside the areas of the grain markets and fruits and vegetables markets.
The department has found that in some areas, the market committee officials were still recovering the fees from Kiryana shops despite clear-cut instructions against it.
In order to streamline the process of recovery and remove malpractices, the department has decided that the detailed list of people liable to pay market dues should be prepared along with assessment of dues to be recovered.
The department in a pilot project initially launched this project in the divisional headquarters districts of the Punjab, which would later be extended to the other districts as well.
Under this project, sugar mills, cotton factories and others will asses their market fee and deposit the dues directly to a bank rather the market committee officials.
This practice is operational in India and only in Delhi; the market committee collects over Rs 600 annually under the head of market and license fee as compared to the same collected from whole of the Punjab, which is Rs 530 to Rs 540 million.
Thus the working of market mechanism in India is better then the Pakistan. The department has directed that a detailed list of licensees working outside regular grain/fruit & vegetable markets may be prepared to implement the revised procedure of collection of market fee and other dues.
The list of such licensees to the Agriculture Marketing department should be provided within 15 days as per described forms so that the procedure and schedule of recovery could be evolved.
The department has issued directives to secretaries and administrators of the market committees to stop their subordinates from visiting the premises and offices of businessmen working outside the limits of grain and fruit and vegetable markets and in the jurisdiction of their respective market committees.
They were that disciplinary action would be taken if any complaint was received in this regard.


The news item has published in The News on November 05 2008 in page 3