ISLAMABAD - Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Saturday showed satisfaction over the performance of Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), which surpassed the tax collection target during the month of July 2017.

The FBR has collected Rs200 billion during first month (July) of the current fiscal year 2017-18, which is 26.5 percent than the collection of same period of last year. The FBR had collected Rs158 billion in July last year. The minister commended the performance of FBR on achieving the revenue target of July 2017, and hoped that the same trend would continue in the coming months and FBR would keep up this performance in the same spirit during the current fiscal year. He made these remarks while chairing a session of Chief Commissioners Conference at Federal Board of Revenue on Saturday to review revenue collection performance of July 2017.

On the occasion, FBR Chairman Tariq Pasha informed the minister that they have decided to assign quarterly revenue collection targets instead of monthly to the chief commissioners of Large Taxpayer Units (LTUs), Regional Tax Offices (RTOs) and Corporate Regional Tax Offices (CRTOs) for the ongoing financial year 2017-18.

Dar appreciated the decision of assigning the quarterly and annual targets beforehand. He said that this would help better planning by the field formations for achieving revenue targets and would also be the basis for reward and recognition for those who perform. The minister emphasized the need for increasing dependence on direct taxes and broadening of tax base. Facilitation of taxpayers should be given top priority to improve tax culture and enhance the confidence and trust of taxpayers, he said.

Dar wished success to the new team and hoped this visible change and trend would continue in the coming months. The government had set tax collection target of Rs4013 billion for the ongoing financial year. The FBR would need 19.4 percent growth rate over the last year’s final tax collection of Rs3.362 trillion. The FBR had missed the last fiscal year’s tax target by a wide margin of Rs259 billion. The FBR chairman said that the FBR missed last fiscal year’s tax collection target due to Rs169.7 billion worth of tax concessions given by the government.

The FBR had suffered shortfall of Rs111 billion due to reduced General Sales Tax (GST) on oil products, Rs16.5 billion due to reduced GST on fertilisers, Rs11.5 billion relief due to textile package, Rs28 billion relief due to zero-rating of five export-oriented sectors and Rs2.7 billion relief on pesticides.