ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar has shown his satisfaction on the provisional revenue collection figures for the quarter ended September 30, 2017, and has expressed confidence that the same trend shall continue and the entire team of the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) would not leave any stone unturned for achievement of assigned target during the remaining part of the FY.
Chairman FBR briefed the finance minister on the revenue collection effort and informed that the board has clocked an unprecedented provisional revenue collection of over Rs 765 billion for the first quarter of the FY by recording an increase of more than 20 per cent over the revenue collected during the corresponding period of last FY. During FY 2016-17, the collection for the first quarter stood at Rs 634 billion as against the figure of Rs 765 billion collected this year.
During September 2017, according to the provisional figures received so far, FBR has made a net collection of more than Rs 315 billion as against Rs 263 billion last year. The revenue collection trend during the first three months of the FY augurs well for the efforts of FBR towards the achievement of the assigned annual revenue targets.
The Finance Minister was informed that, contrary to certain press reports based on unconfirmed and unreliable sources, FBR has achieved quarterly growth of 0.6 per cent over the assigned target. To put the performance in perspective, FBR performance improved by 6.6 per cent compared to last year. The increase in growth of revenue collection becomes even more impressive when viewed in the context of an increase of more than 110 per cent in a number of refunds issued in the first quarter of the current year as compared to the first quarter of the preceding year.
