KARACHI: The Finance Division has issued Rs31.5 billion sales tax refunds to the exporter-oriented industry to deal.
Former finance minister Miftah Ismail had assured the exporters of refund payments before the end of PML-N’s government.
According to an industrialist, a sum of Rs31.5 billion was issued to the entire export-oriented industry against sales tax refunds, while DLTL refunds were still stuck-up.
Exporters said payment of Rs31.5 billion was a welcome sign and the interim government should make arrangements to clear the rest of the stuck up claims.
The exporters had been demanding payment of over Rs100 billion sales tax refunds to deal with the liquidity crunch. The fate of sales tax refunds hangs in balance since last many years, challenging the viability of export-oriented industries, as the manufacturing units are falling out one after another due to the liquidity crunch.
Federal Board of Revenue had announced on May 31, 2018 to issue further refunds of Rs 31.3 billion to take the total amount of refunds issued during the year to more than Rs 100 billion in first 11 months as against Rs 54 billion issued during the entire 12 months of the previous year.
Meanwhile, Federal Board of Revenue during the first 11 months of the current financial year has also recorded a provisional net revenue collection of over Rs. 3274 billion as against Rs. 2854 billion collected during the same period of the previous fiscal year, excluding collection on account of book adjustments which depicts an increase of around 15%.
The provisional collection for the month of May 2018 is Rs 351 billion excluding collection on account of book adjustments. The figures of collection received in the treasuries of the remote areas may further swell the revenue figures. The revenue collection trend during the first eleven months of the financial year augurs well for the efforts of FBR towards achievement of the assigned revised annual revenue target.
