ISLAMABAD: Tax authorities have surpassed their collection target for the second quarter of the ongoing fiscal year, besides recovering a significant part of the shortfall during July-September on the back of a mini-budget introduced last month, reducing chances of additional measures.
Against the October-December target of Rs750 billion, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) provisionally collected Rs770 billion, a growth of 21.5% over the same period of the last year, said spokesman Dr Mohammad Iqbal.
However, the FBR remained short of its first half (July-December) target of Rs1.39 trillion, set by the International Monetary Fund. Against the target of Rs1.39 trillion, the FBR pooled Rs1.37 trillion, said Dr Iqbal. Although it fell short of the first-half goal by Rs20 billion, the tax machinery’s performance was far better than the previous months.
During the July-December period, the FBR collected Rs198 billion more than its collection in the comparative period of the previous year, an increase of 16.9%. However, it needs to hit a pace of 20% to meet the full-year’s target of Rs3.104 trillion.
The government has already implemented the mini-budget through Statutory Regulatory Orders (SROs) after its first-quarter revenue collection fell short of the target of Rs640 billion. The FBR managed to recover half of the Rs40 billion in December alone. It hopes to recover remaining shortfall in the second half of the current fiscal year.
For the current fiscal year, the IMF has assigned Rs3.104 trillion revenue collection target, which FBR Chairman Nisar Mohammad Khan has termed “over stretched and not easy to generate”.
Had the FBR again failed to achieve its second quarter target, the government would have been forced to implement additional measures in February.
