Pay-As-You-Earn Scheme Act, 1973

This 1973 Act allowed the Federal Government to set up a "Pay-As-You-Earn Scheme" letting industrial units import machinery and equipment on credit, with the cost repaid out of the unit's future export earnings rather than paid upfront in foreign exchange. Section 2 defines "Scheme" as the scheme brought into force under Section 3, and "Prescribed" as whatever the Scheme or rules under the Act specify.

Section 3 lets the Federal Government prepare and notify such a Scheme, under which the cost of imported machinery or equipment, along with other prescribed foreign-exchange charges, must be met from the industrial unit's or enterprise's export earnings. The Scheme could specify which categories of industrial units qualify, what proportion of export earnings can be used to meet these foreign-exchange charges, the procedure for approving projects and reviewing machinery import lists, and the terms of the foreign credit involved.

Section 4 gives the Federal Government power to make administering rules, which can impose a penalty on an industrial unit that fails to repatriate required foreign exchange to Pakistan, or whose export earnings fall short of covering the machinery cost and prescribed charges: a penalty payable to the State Bank of Pakistan of up to twenty-seven percent of the rupee value of the shortfall or unrepatriated amount. Such penalties are recoverable as an arrear of land revenue (i.e., through the same enforcement mechanisms used to collect unpaid land tax). Section 5 has since been omitted by later amendment.

This is an old industrial-finance statute (1973) with a specific penalty figure (up to twenty-seven percent) stated directly in the extract, though readers should confirm the Scheme itself is still operative given the age of the law.