ISLAMABAD: Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has started the fiscal year 2020/2020 with 27 percent growth in revenue collection for July 2020.
The FBR collected Rs300 billion in July 2020 as compared with Rs236 billion in the same month of the last year, according to provisional figures released by the FBR on Thursday.
Another significance of the monthly collection, the FBR has surpassed the assigned target for the month of July 2020 by Rs57 billion.
The revenue collection target for the month was set at Rs243 billion. However, with the improved economic activities after ease in lockdown the FBR managed to reach Rs300 billion mark, which is 125 percent of the target.
The Inland Revenue overshot the target by Rs52 billion, whereas the Customs Wing exceeded the target by Rs5 billion.
To redress the hardships of the business community caused by Covid-19, an unprecedented amount of refunds to the tune of Rs15 billion have been disbursed during July 2020, as compared to refunds of Rs.7 billion during July 2019.
Sales Tax refunds are being issued under centralized and automated system called FASTER which is 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.
According to the official figure, total customs duty collected during July, 2020 is over Rs. 42 billion which is 6 percent higher than that collected in same period of July 2019. This is despite the fact that there is less than 1 percent growth in import values during this period.
The higher growth in FBR revenues is 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.
FBR is also engaging with trade and industry to mitigate their genuine grievances.
FBR is proactively reaching out to Trade and Industry and resolving their issues. FBR has also launched an unprecedented crackdown on corruption dismissing and suspending about a dozen officers and officials only during the month of July 2020.
