Refunds during the period have been released to the tune of Rs 42 billion as against Rs 21 billion last year depicting an increase of 100pc.

Another amount of approximately 13 billion has been issued as sales tax refund to claimants through direct credit to their bank accounts, an FBR press release said here Wednesday.

Provisional net revenue collection was recorded as Rs 1033 billion for the first four months of the fiscal year with an increase of around 18.5pc over the net revenue collected during the same period of last fiscal year. The target for the year has been fixed with an annual increase of 19.2pc over the previous year.

The provisional collection for the month of October 2017 was Rs 267 billion which shows an increase of more than 12pc over the collection for October 2016 which depicts a substantial improvement over the growth of 5.23 percent registered in the monthly collection last year.

During fiscal year 2016-17, the collection for the first four months stood at 872 billion as against the figure of Rs 1,032 billion collected this year.

During October 2017, according to the provisional figures received so far, the FBR has made a net collection of more than Rs 267 billion as against Rs 237 billion collected during October, 2016.

The revenue collection trend during the first four months of the financial year augurs well for the efforts of FBR towards achievement of the assigned annual revenue targets.

The Federal Board of Revenue also wishes to dispel the impression created by some reports appearing in sections of the press that the number of the returns received for the tax year 2017 has declined as compared to returns received for tax year 2016.

This impression is grossly misleading as only 352,022 returns were received upto November 1, 2016, whereas 608,587 returns have been received till November 1, 2017. This shows a substantial increase of 72pc in the number of returns received during the same period of previous fiscal year.