Peshawar-Despite un-conducive conditions due to Corona pandemic, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority (KPRA) has made significant increase of 65% in its annual revenue collection during last financial year.
During financial 2018-19, KPRA had made a revenue collection of Rs.10.41 billion which had been increased to Rs.17.20 billion during last financial year. The authority has set a target of Rs. 20 billion revenue collection during the current financial year, and hopefully it will make revenue collection more than the set target.
It was disclosed in a meeting of KPRA held here on Wednesday to review its overall performance with Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in the chair.
The meeting was given a detailed briefing about the overall performance of the authority during last year, its future goals, proposed legal and administrative reforms of the authority, sectoral and geographical expansion of its functions, steps taken by it to extend maximum facilitation to the tax-payers and various other aspects.
Provincial Minister Finance Taimur Jhagra, Secretary Finance Atif-ur-Rahman and Director General KPRA Fayaz Ali Shah and other relevant authorities attended the meeting.
The meeting was informed that KPRA had made significant increase in revenue collection during last financial year without any increase in the existing taxes which had been possible due to the smart tax collection system of the authority, its performance-based incentives for employees, its monthly regular review meetings and other reform measures. The meeting was further informed that 50% of the total provincial revenue was collected by KPRA.
While expressing satisfaction on the overall performance of the authority, the Chief Minister directed the concerned authorities to expedite work to have a separate Act for KPRA to enable it function independently and to further improve its performance. It merits a mention here that currently the authority is functioning under the Finance Act.
Appreciating the role of the high ups of KPRA to make the authority a dynamic tax collection entity, Mahmood Khan said so far KPRA had been very successful in achieving goal for which it had been established. He expressed the hope that KPRA would further improve its performance in the coming days.
On the occasion, he also gave away commendation certificates to the incumbent and former Director Generals of KPRA for their outstanding performance.