ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), under newly appointed administration, is going to issue new strategy to make up the shortfall in revenue collection.
The strategy will cover measures, incentives as well as new mechanism for bridging gap between the revenue target and the current volume of revenue collection.
The FBR could collect Rs 600 billion during the first quarter (July-September) of the current financial year 2015-2016 as against the target of Rs 640 billion.
However, the Finance Ministry had already reduced the gap between the revenue collection by lowering expenditures of Rs 17 billion, therefore, now shortfall remained only Rs 23 billion which had to be met by June 30, 2016, by the end of fiscal year.
A well-placed official source told this scribe that Member Inland Revenue Operations Dr. Muhammad Irshad addressed all the tax officers and field officers via video link and shared his vision regarding tax recovery strategy.
Single point agenda of his address was to motivate field officers and tax collectors to bridge gap in revenue collection shortfall.
The source said that he encouraged the tax collectors and field officers to work hard to meet current shortfall and to achieve new target. In this regard, he said that he would announce the new revenue collection strategy after completion of due process.
He added that he would undertake countrywide tour to hold talks with the regional and even district tax collectors and would seek recommendations from them to enhance volume of revenue collection.
He said that proposals and recommendations moved by field officers would be adequately and appropriately incorporated in the new tax collection recovery strategy.
Federal Finance Ministry witnessed 22% increase in the revenue collection in last month (October 2015) as well as World Bank is also going to provide $500 billion to Pakistan as soft loan next week and it would further strengthen the foreign exchange reserves volume.
During the month of October, 2015, according to the provisional figures received so far, FBR has made a net collection of more than Rs 223 billion, as against net collection of Rs 183 billion made last year showing an increase of 22%.
It is expected that final collection would further increase when the final figures are received. The revenue collection trend during the month of October 2015 shows a marked improvement over the trend in the previous three months of the current financial year and augurs well for the efforts of FBR for achievement of the assigned revenue targets for the current year.
From July to October 2015, FBR made a net collection of more than Rs. 814 billion as against net collection of Rs. 725 billion made last year resulting in an increase of 12%. This is after having issued refunds of Rs.32 billion.