‘FBR to go extra miles for achieving annual target’

KARACHI: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) is determined to achieve the revenue target of Rs5.2 trillion for the current fiscal year, through new measures to counterbalance the revenue setback due to lower sales, federal excise and customs duty collection, its top official said on Monday.

Newly-inducted FBR Chairperson Nausheen Javed Amjad said the annual revenue collection target is challenging. “But through measures the FBR will try to achieve this,” Amjad said, addressing an event of Pakistan Customs.

Amjad took the helm following a controversial exit of Shabbar Zaidi from the apex tax authority’s top echelon. The FBR provisionally collected Rs2.4 trillion during the first seven months of the current fiscal year of 2019/20. It needs to collect more than Rs2.8 trillion in the remaining five months. The FBR was initially assigned the Rs5.5 trillion tax collection target, which was revised downward to Rs5.2 trillion.

The new FRB chairman said the revenue collection suffered due to lower than expected collection under sales tax, federal excise and customs duty heads. Falling imports also kept revenue collection on the lower side. Economic slowdown also hampered the revenue collection, she added. Amjad said there are different tariff slabs of customs duty but most of clearance is made at three percent. On business facilitation, she said the FBR is introducing advance technology for ease of doing business. Further, the revenue authority is also taking measures to reduce human intervention in taxation matters, she said. Amjad said the FBR is creating a friendly environment for small traders and shopkeepers and it is working on its practicality.

Member Customs (Policy) Javed Ghani said Pakistan and China started exchange of trade data under the second phase of free trade agreement. Pakistan is estimated to increase export earnings from China by $500 million in a half and a year under the second phase of free trade agreement. The bilateral trade volume surpassed $12 billion with over $10 billion in trade imbalance for Pakistan.

Ghani said under-invoicing of trade between China and Pakistan has halved since the start of trade data exchange between the two sides two years back. Data received from China customs was disseminated to all customs station in Pakistan to ensure application of prevailing rates of duty and taxes, he added.