Govt eyeing Rs5.5trln revenue target in next budget: Hafeez Shaikh

ISLAMABAD: Advisor to Prime Minister on Finance Abdul Hafeez Shaikh Saturday informed that the government was setting the revenue collection target of Rs 5.5 trillion for next financial year of 2019-20.

He said in order to collect the additional revenues, more people and commercial companies would be brought in to tax net and no extra burden would be put on those who were already paying taxes. However he said the government was taking hard measures to put more burden on the tax evaders.

He hoped that the new Chairman of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) Shabbar Zaidi who was quite an able and hard working person, would meet the challenge of an ambitious target.

Addressing a press conference here, Hafeez Shaikh said at present 360 companies were paying 85% of total revenue of the country, while there are thousands of other companies who were not still paying any taxes.

He said in order to bring people in the tax system, the government would utilize the data of gas, electricity consumers, bank account holders and companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP).

He pointed out that there were as many as 341,000 commercial consumers out of which only 40,000 were registered with the FBR.

Similarly, Shaikh said out of total 50 million bank accounts, only 10% were registered with the FBR.

The government he said was determined to bring all the tax evaders to tax net in order to increase tax revenues.