ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is making preparations to welcome the upcoming democratic government in a befitting manner. In this regard, discussions and consultations about the possible demands of the upcoming finance minister from the FBR regarding improvement in performance on revenue collection, countering terror finance and money laundering to keep the national forex reserves and others are underway at almost all the concerned levels in the FBR.
It has been a practice of almost every government and finance minister to install own finance team to get desired results on economic and finance level.
Moreover, source at FBR told Customs Today on Friday that FBR’s concerned officials; members and director generals, are preparing materials for briefing sessions for the finance minister. On the basis of these materials, a joint briefing material will be finalized which will contain recommendations, pledges, as well as demands from the FBR’s side. These briefing materials also contain the lists of available resources; both human and infrastructural as well as available options for meeting the revenue collection targets to coming up the higher expectations of the next government.
The source further said that officers of higher grades in a social media group were very active in discussion in this regard as their major concern was the preparation of recommendations in a well prepared manner. On policy side, FBR will seek more autonomous status to reduce dependence on finance division for every act. It will also help the FBR in overcoming the red tapism as well as to make well in time decisions. Currently, FBR has to seek permission from the finance division even for the procurement of petty things.
Moreover, the source said that the top most demand from the FBR side would be restoration of frozen special allowances for the staff and officers if the upcoming government would desire an improved and better performance from the officials. The previous government soon after getting charge of the helm of affairs of the FBR, froze the special allowances of the FBR officials which proved disturbing for the FBR but FBR officials demonstrated extra ordinary performance in doubling the revenue collection in last five years.
