ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has provisionally collected around Rs363 billion during January 2020 against the monthly target of Rs340 billion, reflecting an increase of Rs23 billion. Sources told Business Recorder here on Friday that the FBR has provisionally collected Rs2,569 billion during July-January 2020-21 against the target of Rs2,550 billion, showing an increase of Rs19 billion.

The FBR collection would further increase on Saturday (January 30) as all customs stations would remain open for clearance of imported goods.

The tax machinery has surpassed its monthly target for January 2021 as its provisional collection stood at Rs363 billion against the monthly target of Rs340 billion.

Officials said that the increase in pace of revenue collection reflects growing economic activities in the country.

Moreover, the FBR's performance for achieving its monthly target for January 2021 will be instrumental in restoring confidence of the tax machinery.

Tax authorities are confident that the FBR would be able to achieve the annual tax collection target of Rs4,963 billion envisaged for the current fiscal year.

A senior FBR official said that the net revenue collection stood at Rs363 billion which was 12 percent higher over the same month of the last fiscal year and so far the growth was highest during the current fiscal year.

Sources said that the economic activities started picking up, so its impact was appearing on revenue collection efforts.

Now the FBR will have to collect Rs2,394 billion in remaining five months (February to June) of 2020-21 for achieving the assigned revenue collection target of Rs4,963 billion by the end of current fiscal year.

The FBR had collected net revenue of Rs2,206 billion from July to December which showed a growth of five percent over Rs2,101 billion which was collected during the same period last year.

Income tax collection for July to December stood at Rs816 billion.

Similarly, collection of sales tax, federal excise duty, customs duty remained at Rs915 billion, Rs127 billion, and Rs336 billion respectively. For the month of December only, the total collected revenue stood at Rs508 billion, which was 97.7 percent of the target of Rs520 billion and showed a growth of 8.3 percent against 469 billion collected in last December.

There is an increase of Rs39 billion in the revenue collection of December 2019.

This is the highest monthly growth during the Jul-Dec period.

In the first six months of the current fiscal year, refunds to the tune of Rs102 billion have been issued compared to Rs53 billion for the same period the last year.

This represents an increase of 90 percent in the issuance of refunds.

Moreover, under the Prime Minister’s Corona Relief Package, refunds of Rs42 billion have also been issued this year.

Despite excessive issuance of refunds this year, the FBR has managed to collect significantly more revenue in comparison to last year when Covid had not disrupted economic life.

Increased refunds have greatly helped boost the economic activity in the country.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021