Finance Minister,
Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar, has shown his satisfaction on the provisional
revenue collection figures for the quarter ended 30th September 2017, and
has expressed confidence that the same trend shall continue and the entire
team of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would not leave any stone
unturned for achievement of assigned target during the remaining part of
the fiscal year.
Chairman FBR briefed
the Finance Minister on the revenue collection effort and informed that
the Board has clocked an unprecedented provisional revenue collection of
over Rs. 765 billion for the first quarter of the fiscal year by recording
an increase of more than 20% over the revenue collected during the
corresponding period of last fiscal year. The provisional collection
for the month of September 2017 shows an increase of 20% over the
collection for September 2016 which depicts a substantial improvement over
the growth of 0.8% registered in the monthly collection last year. During
fiscal year 2016-17, the collection for the first quarter stood at Rs. 634
billion as against the figure of Rs. 765 billion collected this year.
During September
2017, according to the provisional figures received so far, FBR has made a
net collection of more than Rs. 315 billion as against Rs. 263 billion
collected during September 2016. The revenue collection trend during the
first three months of the financial year augurs well for the efforts of
FBR towards achievement of the assigned annual revenue targets.
The Finance Minister
was informed that, contrary to certain press reports based on unconfirmed
and unreliable sources, FBR has achieved quarterly growth of over 20%
during July-September 2017, whereas the required annual growth for
achieving the assigned target was 19.4%. To put the performance in
perspective, it may be noted that the growth of over 20% over
the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year has been recorded
against 6.6% growth achieved during July-September 2016 over the
corresponding period of fiscal year 2015-16. The increase in growth of
revenue collection becomes even more impressive when viewed in context of
an increase of more than 110% in the amount of refunds issued in the first
quarter of the current year as compared to the first quarter of the preceding
year.