ISLAMABAD: Contrary to the prevailing trend of collecting revenue in excess of the target for the entire current fiscal, the revenue watchdog Federal Board of Revenue failed to achieve its envisaged target of Rs 457 billion for January 2022, down from Rs 27 billion.
The shortfall could deal a serious blow to efforts to achieve the target of Rs 6.1 trillion for the current fiscal year 2021-22, as the government raised the revenue collection target from Rs 5.829 trillion to Rs 6.1 trillion. IMF program.
The trend of exceeding the monthly revenue collection target of FBR reversed with the beginning of the first month of the second half (January-June) period of the current fiscal as FBR missed its monthly envisaged target for January 2022 by a margin of Rs. . 27 billion because it collects Rs 430 billion.
However, FBR continued to claim to exceed its seven-month (July-January) revenue collection target with a margin of Rs 262 billion. But the monthly envisaged target for January 2022 missed as per provisional revenue collection data as FBR managed to collect Rs 3352 billion in the first seven months and now balance it to achieve the overall target of Rs 6100 billion displayed on its board. 2658 billion would need to be collected over a period of five months (February-June).
The News sent a questionnaire to FBR's official spokesperson on Monday night to find out the reasons for missing the collection target for January 2022, but did not receive a response till the filing of the report.
According to an official announcement made on Monday night, FBR has successfully maintained its growth trajectory in revenue collection.
FBR has released the provisional revenue collection figures for the seven months from July 2021 to January 2022 for the financial year 2021-22.
According to provisional information, the country's premier revenue collection organization has collected net revenue of Rs 3,352 billion during July 2021 to January 2022 of the current financial year, which is Rs 262 billion more than the target of Rs 3,090 billion. This represents an increase of around 30.4 against the collections of Rs 2,571 billion during the corresponding period of the previous year.
Net collections for the month of January 2022 stood at Rs 430 billion, representing an increase of 17.2 per cent as against Rs 367 billion in the corresponding period of the previous year.
These figures will improve further before the close of the day and after taking into account the book adjustments.
On the other hand, during the first seven months (July2021 to January 2022) of the current fiscal, gross collections increased from Rs 2,705 billion to Rs 3,533 billion, showing a growth of 30.6 per cent. Similarly, refund disbursement witnessed an increase of 35.9 per cent as Rs 182 billion were disbursed during the first seven months of the current financial year as compared to the figure of Rs 134 billion in the previous year.
It is pertinent to mention that FBR has initiated several innovative interventions at both policy and operational level with a view to maximize revenue potential through digitization, transparency and convenience of taxpayers as per the FBR statement.
It added that the measures not only ensured ease of doing business but also resulted in healthy and steady growth in revenue collection.