President Shavkat Mirziyoev convened an extraordinary government meeting Tuesday devoted to increasing revenues of local budgets, reforming the tax system and tackling inflation through boosting production volumes.
“We are trying to increase revenues of local budgets, but we are struggling due to poor qualification and lack of good faith of local executives. I’d say that there is no proper system in local tax authorities. We have to cleanse the tax system from impurities, otherwise we won’t be able to pay wages.”
“We should act in a way that business come out of the shadow and legalize so that they bring revenues to local budgets. In addition, we will fight against corruption at the lower level. 77 companies, with over 1 billion soums of turnover reported that only one person was working. I was not satisfied with the fact that there were 16% more tax revenues [compared to the 5 months last year]. Around 60% of taxes were contributed by only 171 enterprises.”
“We’re are currently drafting a new tax concept, with World Bank and IMF assisting us in doing so. We had requested them to, so that we avoid mistakes. They will present us their proposals by June 15, and only afterwards we will announce the changes to the tax concept.”
“The second issue is the inflation rate. Executives of all levels must learn how to tackle inflation. We need to have free formation of prices, to this end, we have scrapped all privileges, benefits to certain firms.”
“The people won’t care whether you bring high-speed trains or better roads to their doorsteps, they care about the prices in markets and their own purchasing power.”
During the meeting, the president also spoke about corruption among the former senior tax officials.
"The top executives of the Tashkent markets are now talking, to whom and how much they gave and what they did. They will return all the money. Those people along with their relatives took advantage of the people. This will not happen anymore. Those kind of people will have to go, whoever is behind them.
“Therefore, I appointed a new deputy Tashkent mayor, and today I appointed a new Deputy chairman of the Tax Committee [Alijon Faiboev has replaced Nazarbaev Norboev].”
“I also sacked the head of the Tashkent city tax office, Pardaev [Muzaffar Pardaev has been replaced by Normat Tursunov], we will investigate him too. The deputy chairman of the Tax Committee, Norboev [Nazarali Norboev] has also been relieved of his duties".
"Those being investigated told that people were bribing US$ 30-40 thousand in bribes for senior tax jobs, and Mr. Yuldashev (the former First deputy chairman of the Tax committee, Abdusalam Yuldashev) was the middleman."
Earlier this year in a government meeting Shavkat Mirziyoyev said that senior prosecutor jobs were worth US$ 30-40,000.
