ISLAMABAD - The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has surpassed the tax collection target of Rs207 billion for the previous month of August.
“We have collected Rs210 billion in August, which is slightly higher than the target,” said an official of the FBR while talking to The Nation on Friday. He further said that tax collection would further increase in the next few days. The FBR had collected Rs366 billion during first couple of months (July and August) of the current fiscal year. The government had set a challenging tax collection target of Rs3621 billion for the ongoing financial year (from July 2016 to June 2017). Chairman Federal Board of Revenue Nisar Khan, in meeting of Senate Standing Committee on Finance, had expressed hope to achieve the annual tax collection target of Rs3621 billion by the end of June next year.
The government had collected more than Rs3,130 billion in the year 2015-16 as per figures consolidated and reconciled by Accountant General of Pakistan Revenue as against the target of Rs3104 billion. The over-performance in tax collection had provided fiscal space to the government to adjust the tax refunds of the exporters. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had given the cheques to the exporters in late June 2016 for settling about 6,332 tax refund cases amounting to Rs21.44 billion. The tax-to-GDP ratio jumped from 9.4 percent in 2014-15 to 10.5 percent in 2015-16 due to the improved revenue collection.
The break-up of Rs3621 billion showed that FBR would collect Rs1418 billion as direct tax, Rs1514 billion as general sales tax, Rs477 billion and Rs212 billion during ongoing financial year.
separating growth from contraction and down from 52.6 in July.
Ahead of this weekend's Group of 20 summit in China, the International Monetary Fund also offered a downcast picture of US economic prospects, with economic researchers saying they expected to downgrade their 2016 US growth outlook next month.