‘Long march’ causing Rs1bn loss per day: FBR

SOHAIL SARFRAZ

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue is daily suffering a revenue loss of roughly Rs 1 billion in the federal capital alone following complete closure of business and trading activities due to long-march of Tehreek-e-Minhajul Quran led by Dr Tahirul Qadri. Sources told Business Recorder here on Tuesday that the revenue loss may cross Rs 3 billion on January 16 in case shutdown of business centers of Islamabad continues on Wednesday. Mainly FBR suffers huge revenue loss due to blockage of imported consignments at Karachi Port.

The stoppage of imported goods clearance from ports has immediate revenue impact on tax collection of the FBR. In case of federal capital, office work at FBR and its field formation has been adversely affected. Tax officials cannot raise tax demands, or issue adjudicating orders and recovery notices to registered persons. The exercise of recovery of arrears cannot be pursued in the absence of necessary staff. The closure of Karachi has much higher revenue impact as compared to Islamabad.

Official said that the total shut down has been observed in industrial areas of I-9 and I-10, all Markaz of Islamabad including F-10 Markaz, Super Market/F-6 Markaz, Jinnah Super Market/F-7 Markaz, Ayub Market/F-8 Markaz, Abpara/G-6 Markaz, G-9 Markaz and other Markaz. Blue Area also remained close during the last two days covering head office of business establishments and private as well as multinational companies. Banks and insurance companies also remained closed in the federal capital.

A senior tax official said that the Large Taxpayer Unit (LTU) Islamabad and Regional Tax Office (RTO) Islamabad have territorial jurisdiction over the federal capital for collection of taxes. The jurisdiction of LTU Islamabad primarily consists of cases relating to oil and gas, banking, telecommunication, textile, cement, pharmaceutical, fertilizer and construction sectors. The head offices of a number of revenue generating organizations are situated in Islamabad. The LTU Islamabad was assigned task of achieving budgetary target of Rs 371 billion for 2011-12.This amount constituted 20 percent of the national budget assigned to the FBR. Thus, closure of business establishments and offices of national and multinational companies would have direct negative impact on the revenue collection of the FBR.