Staff Correspondent:

Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed on Monday slammed a group of economists for their reluctance to see any positive move of the country’s economy and urged them to see things with inner eyes.

“There are some junior economists, they do not see anything at all, I know them all very well, I have been teaching since 1970, and all of them are my students. If you want to see, you need to have eyes, inner eyes,” he said.

The Adviser was speaking at a seminar on activities of income tax, VAT and Customs in the 2025-26 budget and inauguration of the e-return submission for the 2025-26 fiscal.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR) organised the programme at its headquarters with its chairman Md Abdur Rahman Khan in the chair.

Dr Salehuddin asked the young economists of the country to change their attitude and recognize good things. “It needs an attitude, if we do not want to see, then we will not see anything,” he said.

He also admitted that there are many mistakes of this government, but if anyone encourages the good things it brings in a positive move for all concerns. “This is not right that you will tell anything mixing your imaginations. Whatever, we have independence (to say anything), they will continue to say.”

The Finance Adviser urged the mass media to focus on the positive side of the government in a bigger way. “Let’s see the mistakes less, always try to see the glass is half-full rather than half-empty,” he said.

Regarding the e-return of the income tax issue, he highly lauded the NBR for this great job. “NBR is the centre point of the revenue, trade and commerce, it is not only to collect revenues, but also facilitate the trade and commerce of the country,” he said.

Dr Salehuddin mentioned that time has come to ensure the transparency and accountability of everything.

Dr Salehuddin appreciated the NBR officials for their rigorous tasks to gather revenue for the country saying that everyone lauded NBR, even the Chief Adviser.