KPRA registers 65pc increase in collection during 2019-20

PESHAWAR: Despite un-conducive conditions due to Corona pandemic, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Revenue Authority (KPRA) has registered significant increase of 65% in its annual revenue collection during the last financial year.

During the financial 2018-19, KPRA had made a revenue collection of Rs. 10.41 billion which has been increased to Rs. 17.20 billion during the last financial year. The authority has set a target of Rs. 20 billion revenue collection during the current financial year, and hopefully it will make revenue collection more than the set target.

It was revealed in a meeting of KPRA held here on Wednesday to review its overall performance with Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Mahmood Khan in the chair. The meeting was given a detailed briefing about the overall performance of the authority during the last year, its future goals, the proposed legal and administrative reforms of the authority, sectoral and geographical expansion of its functions, steps taken by the authority to extend maximum facilitation to the tax-payers and various other aspects.

Provincial Minister Finance Taimur Saleem Jhagra, Secretary Finance Atif-ur-Rehman and Director General KPRA Fayaz Ali Shah and other relevant authorities attended the meeting. The meeting was informed that the authority has made significant increase in revenue collection during the last financial year without any increase in the existing taxes which has been possible due to the smart tax collection system of the authority, its performance based incentives for employees, its monthly regular review meetings and other reforms measures.

The meeting was further informed that 50% of the total provincial revenue was collected by KPRA. While expressing his satisfaction on the overall performance of the authority, the Chief Minister directed the concerned authorities to expedite work to have a separate Act for KPRA in order to enable it function independently and to further improve its performance.

It merits a mention here that currently the authority is functioning under the finance Act. While appreciating the role of the high ups of KPRA to make the authority a dynamic tax collection entity of the provincial government, Mahmood Khan said that so far KPRA has been very successful in achieving the goal for which it had been established. He expressed the hope that KPRA would further improve its performance in the coming days.

On this occasion, he gave away commendation certificates to the incumbent and former Director Generals of KPRA for their outstanding performance.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020