Is the House actively trying to shoot us in the collective foot? The House Planning and Budget Committee is looking expand the exemptions list of the value-added tax (VAT) legislation, according to the committee’s chair Hussein Eissa. “We want to add eight new goods including domestic weaving and textiles, cooking oil, and [get this] cleaning goods,” Eissa tells Al Borsa. His comments come as the committee begins reviewing the complaints about the VAT legislation logged during last week’s hearings, ahead of deliberating and compiling a report on the VAT next week. During those hearing, Finance Minister Amr El Garhy had told the House that the IMF complained about the size of the exemptions list for the proposed value-added tax (VAT), adding that around 99% of basic goods were already exempt.

Another soapbox preacher in the House on the IMF: Meanwhile, Tarek Radwan, the Deputy Chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is lashing out at the Ismail cabinet for entering talks with the IMF. He accuses the government of not being transparent about the talks (obviously not a reader of Enterprise) adding that the loan would prove catastrophic for the poor in Egypt, Al Mal reports.

On a rather more constructive note: The House Planning and Budget Committee is also apparently drafting a comprehensive law taxing tobacco and its paraphernalia, the proceeds of which will got to the national health insurance fund, Eissa said, according to Al Masry Al Youm. The Tax Authority collects EGP 1.6 bn taxes on cigarette sales every year, of which EGP 35 mn go to health insurance for school students.

Meanwhile, the House Industry Committee adopted 13 recommendations to the government to help industry, which is reeling from the FX crunch, Ahram Gate reports. These include granting export subsidies based on the entire cost of the value chain and not the just the end product and extending the grace period to pay customs on raw materials to two years. In a separate interview the committee’s chair and Federation of Egyptian Industries head Mohamed El Sewedy called on the government to raise export subsidies to EGP 10 bn per year from EGP 6 bn. We had noted yesterday that these subsidies were in fact EGP 4 bn in this year’s budget, excluding any special or conditional earmark.