ISLAMABAD - Despite showing healthy growth of over 17 percent in tax collection during eight months, the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would miss its annual target by around Rs100 billion during current fiscal year.

"Keeping in view the current pace of tax collection, we have estimated that tax collection will reach Rs3900 billion by the end of ongoing fiscal year," said an official of the FBR.

He further said that recent rupee depreciation against US dollar would improve the tax collection at the import stage that includes custom duties, regulatory duties, sales tax and withholding tax.

The Pak rupee-US dollar exchange rate in the interbank market closed at Rs115 per US dollar and witnessed an intraday high and low of Rs116.25 per US dollar and Rs110.60 per US dollar, respectively on last Tuesday.

Earlier, in December 2017, the rupee lost around 5 percent to become Rs110.64 to the greenback and stayed at the level for the last few months.

The government had set the tax collection target at Rs4013 billion for the current fiscal year. The FBR has recorded a provisional net revenue collection of over Rs2259 billion during first eight months (July to February) of the current financial year as against Rs1920 billion collected during the same period of the previous fiscal year, excluding collection on account of book adjustments.

FBR has recorded an increase of around 17.65 percent over the revenue collected during the corresponding period of last fiscal year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has estimated that FBR would not achieve its tax collection target during FY2018.

The tax collection would remain Rs55 billion lesser than the target approved by the parliament. The tax collection is expected to reach Rs3958 billion as against the target of Rs4013 billion.

"The ministry of finance had already revised the budget deficit target to 5.5 percent of the GDP due to downward revision of tax collection target," said the official.

Earlier, the government had revised the target to 5 percent of the GDP from 4.1 percent of the GDP (Rs1.48 trillion), approved by parliament in June last year. The government had restricted the budget deficit at Rs796.3 billion (2.2 percent of the GDP) during first half (July-December) of the current fiscal year.

However, the expected increase in expenditures ahead of general elections and missing of tax collection target would push the budget deficit to 5.5 percent of the GDP (around two trillion rupee).