SUNDAY JANUARY 16: FBR Members, LTUs, etc: World Bank concerned at lack of coordination

ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) review mission has conveyed to the FBR Chairman, Salman Siddique, that the absence of co-ordination among FBR Members Domestic Operations, FBR Member Enforcement, FBR Member Audit, Pakistan Revenue Automation Limited (PRAL) and Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs)/Regional Tax Offices is affecting the performance of field formations.
Sources told Business Recorder here on Saturday that the WB review mission has submitted an update on the Tax Administration Reform Project (TARP) to the newly appointed Board Chairman, highlighting issues negatively impacting FBR's effectiveness, and needed to be urgently addressed.
In a letter to Salman Siddique, WB review mission said that apparently there is no accountability in the field formations that do not implement the directives of the FBR. "There are no apparent consequences if instructions from the headquarters are not followed by field staff", WB said.
The WB said that the FBR does not make adequate use of technology in support of enforcement and audit. In particular, time-consuming routine tasks that could be better carried out through the use of computers are done manually. The FBR should deploy additional staff and resources to clear pending sales tax refund claims expeditiously, the WB said.
The computer applications that have been deployed to the field are largely under-utilised. The field formations report that they have not been adequately trained in using computer. The FBR can adopt a policy under which the plans for and the features of new applications are announced to all field formations in advance, with a 1-2 month lead time, the WB said.
In FBR, there is a well-designed in-service training program, but it is focused on business processes almost non-existent (eg for an important group of about 10,000 employees in BS 7-14, whose skill requirements have changed). The FBR needs to refocus its training on this cohort of mid-level staff if it is to achieve its training target 5,000 employees during 2011.
The WB review mission said that the current allocation for the Public Sector Development Program (PSDP) for TARP amounts to approximately $7.5 million for fiscal year 2010-11, in contrast to a requirement of about $16.3 million to support the on-going project activities and commitments. The FBR management should apprise Ministry of Finance that unless a sufficient PSDP allocation is not made, project could be delayed.
The bidding documents for 31 tenders (out of a total of 66 tenders) with a value of $19 million are at various stages of processing. It is critical that FBR should complete the procurement processes within the next quarter, so that all the outstanding goods and services are received and installed well before the project closing date of December 31, 2011. The Bank team has agreed to bi-weekly video conferences with the project management unit (PMU) of the FBR to resolve any pending issues and help expedite the procurement processes, sources said.
The WB said that there is limited active follow-up on important initiatives. For example, the key performance indicators are not being actively tracked to ensure achievement of expected results. Sources said that the WB has reviewed and assessed key aspects of the implementation of tax administration reforms. The implementation progress in general (especially on the procurement side) remains on track, although the pace of implementation is slow and FBR faces a number of challenges to achieve the desired results, the WB said.
The WB stated that the establishment of the central treasury to process all sales tax refund has shown positive results. Since late September 2010, 14,701 cheques for Rs 10,492 million have been issued, reducing the backlog of refund along with opportunities of revenue leakage and corruption. In addition, a new management tool for monitoring the inventory of refund requests has been successfully deployed. Despite these two positive developments, progress in reducing the stock of outstanding Sales Tax refund has been rather slow. Additional staff and resources need to be deployed to expeditiously process the remaining backlog of claims, the WB review mission added.