FBR’s new team hold session with IMF

ISLAMABAD: The FBR’s newly inducted team on Tuesday held ‘introductory session’ with the IMF high-ups based in Washington DC and discussed achieving of possibility of annual tax collection target and pursuing reform path under $6 billion Extended Fund Facility (EFF).

The IMF’s programme under $6 billion EFF has been stalled at the moment and its revival depends upon the performance of the FBR, tackling of cash bleeding power sector and ability of the government to pursue reforms path. The autonomy to the State Bank of Pakistan and strengthening of other regulators such as Nepra is also among the major conditions of the IMF for reviving the EFF programme.

The IMF’s team from Washington DC and Islamabad participated into online meeting held on Tuesday afternoon here from FBR’s headquarters.

The FBR’s high-ups claimed that it was just an introductory session because new appointments were made into top tax machinery as FBR chairman and all important members were changed and brought new faces into FBR at all important key positions.

The FBR high-ups informed the IMF team that the FBR fetched Rs300 billion into national kitty in July 2020 against assigned target of Rs243 billion thus surpassing the target by Rs57 billion. The FBR’s Member Inland Revenue (IR) Operation Dr Muhammad Ashfaque told the IMF team that the domestic taxes including Income Tax, Sales Tax on domestic stage and Federal Excise Duty (FED) witnessed almost 30 percent growth in July 2020 compared to the same month of last year after exclusion of amnesty scheme amounts.

He said that the Income Tax recorded 8.9 percent growth, Sales Tax on domestic stage 19 percent and FED on domestic at 67 percent in July 2020. On the other hand the revenue collection at import stage witnessed slight decline in first month of the current fiscal year.

If the revenue collection continued growing with the existing momentum then the FBR would be able to achieve its envisaged tax collection target of Rs4963 billion.

“The FBR’s performance can be judged after first quarter (July-Sept) period as after passing three months period the revenue collection trends could be judged in much better way” said one top official of FBR and added that the distribution of annual tax on average on monthly basis could not be considered right way for analyzing FBR’s performance because alone in June every year the FBR used to collect two months collection just in one month so the method of average out could not be replicated in case of FBR.