Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday announced to appoint renowned chartered accountant and tax affairs expert Syed Shabbar Zaidi as chairman of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR).
Zaidi is a senior partner at AF Ferguson and Co, a leading accountancy and advisory company in Pakistan and a Price Waterhouse Coopers member firm. He has previously served as provincial finance minister in the Sindh caretaker cabinet in 2013.
Zaidi has also served as president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Pakistan and as chairman of the South Asian Federation of Accountants (SAFA) in the past, and has also authored several books. However, the government has yet to issue an official notification for his appointment.
Zaidi’s appointment comes days after the removal of Jahanzeb Khan from the position as head of the tax collection body.
On Saturday, the government appointed Dr Reza Baqir, a Pakistani economist working for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as governor of the State Bank of Pakistan.
The appointments to the key positions come as Islamabad seeks to finalise a bailout package from the global lender. Earlier, Hafeez Sheikh had picked Ahmed Mujtaba Memon as the new FBR chairman. However, the government had withheld the notification.
Zaidi is well versed in Pakistan’s tax laws and the key policy matters governing fiscal strategy, corporate regulations and foreign exchange regimes and has written extensively on the topics. He recently also advised the Supreme Court in a case concerning offshore assets owned by Pakistanis.
The FBR is on course to register one of the highest shortfalls of its history by the close of this fiscal year, anticipated to come in above Rs350 billion.