FBR surpasses revenue collection target of July by Rs57bn

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has collected revenues of Rs. 300 billion during the month of July against the set target of Rs. 243 billion, surpassing the target by Rs. 57 billion.

The collections during first month of the current fiscal year are 125 percent of the assigned target, according to data released by the board here.

According to the data, the Inland Revenue overshot the target by Rs. 52 billion, whereas the Customs Wing exceeded the target by Rs. 5 billion despite Rs25 billion relief given in Customs duty.

It is worth mentioning that in July 2019, the net collection of Inland Revenue had remained Rs. 236 billion, said FBR in a statement.

To redress the hardships of the business community caused by COVID-19, an unprecedented amount of refunds to the tune of Rs. 15 billion have been disbursed during July 2020, as compared to refunds of Rs. 7 billion during July 2019.

The Sales Tax refunds are being issued under centralized and automated system i.e.

FASTER, which has been clearing refunds to exporters within 72 hours for the first time as committed by the government in July, 2020.

This has facilitated the exporters and the industry easing off their liquidity crunch, the statement added.

According to the official figure, total customs duty collected during July, 2020 was over Rs42 billion which is 6% higher than that collected in same period of July, 2019.

The collection was made despite the fact that there was less than 1 percent growth in import values during this period.

The higher growth in FBR revenues was primarily on account of better supervision and improved administrative controls despite economic conditions caused by COVID-19 during which the country mostly remained in lockdown state.

The revenue trajectory also beat the adverse impact of governments’ import compression policy, it added.

The board has also been engaged with trade and industry to mitigate their genuine grievances.

FBR is proactively reaching out to Trade and Industry and resolving their issues.

It has also launched an unprecedented crackdown on corruption dismissing and suspending about a dozen officers and officials only during the month of July 2020.