ISLAMABAD: Federal Finance Minister Ishaq Dar has appreciated both the sitting and former team of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) for making untiring efforts to achieve the revenue targets.
In this regard, he mentioned that the FBR had collected Rs 785 billion in second quarter of the current fiscal year and thus revenue collected in the first half of the fiscal year was Rs 1,385 billion and there was 18.2 percent growth in tax collection.
Addressing a news conference along with FBR Chairman Nisar Muhammad Khan, Special Advisor to Prime Minister on Revenue Haroon Akhtar Khan and others here at the FBR Headquarters, he said that the volume of total revenue collection was Rs 1,940 billion before the PML-N took charge of the affairs of the country.
A large number of representatives of traders including former President Islamabad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ICCI) Muzammil Hussain Sabri and others were also present on the occasion with an objective to formally launch the Voluntary Tax Compliance Scheme.
He further said that government was trying hard to keep the inflation rate below 4% by the end of the financial year as well as to higher GDP growth would be 5%. He said that government has started making payments to the energy related projects and even then volume of foreign exchange reserves stood higher than $ 20 billion.
He said that after the announcement of this scheme, government held dozens of sessions of parleys with traders in last five and half months and then came to the conclusion; however, traders’ representative organizations also took a lot of care of interests of their community fellows due course of talks.
He said that Pakistan had completed 10 review of extended fund facility program with International Monetary Fund (IMF) and IMF had endorsed progress made by the government in achieving targets in all five sectors.
Finance Minister said that leaders of opposition parties had started protest against privatization of PIA and Voluntary Tax Compliance Scheme without going through the relevant legislation.
“With the approval of President Mamnoon Hussain the Voluntary Tax Compliance Act has now become formal part of the constitution, but few politicians were criticizing this bill without having required knowledge about this bill” he added.
Moreover, Dar cleared that the scheme was not an amnesty scheme for whitening of black money of politicians or businessmen but it was confined only to whitening of working capital of traders. On high moral grounds Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to exclude parliamentarians from this scheme and this decision is welcoming one.
