ISLAMABAD: The Board-n-Council meeting of the Federal Board of Revenue has approved allocation of $ 80,000 for the purpose of human resource development to enhance working capacity of the employees.
The Department for International Development (DFID) of British Government is likely to provide an amount of $1.5 million to the World Bank to initiate numerous development projects with FBR. This amount will remain with the World Bank and the Bank will spend it as per its own discretion. Both DFID and WB want to assist FBR. A well-placed source at FBR Wednesday told this scribe that Board-n-Council of FBR held detailed discussions on activities related to all wings especially Operation Wing, IR Wing and Customs Wings.
“An activity is to set up a special cell at Policy Wing for research and data analysis so that budget may be prepared on right accurate lines,” the source added, saying that another activity approved by the Board-n-Council meeting was to bring those sectors in the tax net which were lying out of the net like capital gain from the Stock Exchange and real state. Similarly, the source said that more activities to improve audit system of sales tax as well as up-gradation of software of database were also minutely discussed and approved in the meeting.
However, the source doubted about the success of the said projects, saying that amount would remain with the WB which would spend on its own discretion and such a state of affairs also reflected a high level of trust deficit between the international organisations and the FBR. Moreover, the source further said that national organizations like FBR were supposed to allocate major portion of funds on human resource development, whereas, in this case, meager amount of $80, 000 out of $ 1.5 million spoke the volume of attention of the authorities towards the capacity building of employees.
