Implicit taxation of Pakistan's agriculture: an analysis of the commodity and input prices

Quantifies and discusses the implications of implicit taxes in Pakistan's agriculture. The methodology of the paper consists of defining the import and export parity prices of major agricultural commodities grown in Pakistan, by comparing them with domestic procurement prices. Although the analysis covered only four commodities, implicit tax rates in some of the years from 1970-71 to 1989-90 were as high as 75% for certain commodities. It was only in the case of IRRI rice and sugarcane that domestic prices were above the world levels in some years of the period under consideration. Judged in the light of the relative taxable capacities of agriculture and Pakistan's economy as a whole, implicit taxes were much higher in agriculture than in the other sectors of the economy. -from Authors