FBR bucks trend as it fails to achieve January 2022 revenue target

• FBR fails to reach its target of Rs457 billion for January 2022.
  
• Shortfall could be a major blow to government's efforts to meet its tax collection.
  
• FBR misses its monthly target for January 2022 by Rs27 billion.

ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has failed to reach its revenue collection target of Rs457 billion for January 2022, falling short by Rs27 billion, bucking the trend of collecting more revenue than the target throughout the current fiscal year, reported The News on Tuesday.

The deficit might turn out to be a major setback in the government's efforts to meet its tax collection target of Rs6.1 trillion for the current fiscal year 2021-22, which was raised upward from Rs5.829 trillion under the IMF programme.

With the commencement of the second half (Jan-June) of the current financial year, the pattern of surpassing the FBR's monthly revenue collection target was flipped, as the FBR missed its monthly target for January 2022 by Rs27 billion, as it collect Rs430 billion.

The FBR, however, maintained to assert that it had exceeded its seven-month revenue (July-Jan) collection target by Rs262 billion.

However, according to provisional revenue collection numbers, the monthly target for January 2022 was missed.

The FBR collected Rs3,352 billion in the first seven months, and it now needs to collect Rs2,658 billion in the next five months (February-June) to meet the overall target of Rs6,100 billion set on its board.

Why did FBR miss its target?

The News addressed a questionnaire to FBR's official spokesperson on Monday night to find out why the collecting target for January 2022 was missed, but received no response until the report was filed.

According to an official announcement made on Monday night, FBR has successfully maintained the momentum of its growth trajectory in revenue collection.

The FBR has released provisional revenue collection numbers for the seven months of fiscal year 2021-22, from July 2021 to January 2022.

According to the provisional information, the country's premier revenue collection organisation has collected net revenue of Rs3,352 billion during July 2021 to January 2022 of current financial year, which has exceeded the target of Rs3,090 billion by Rs262 billion. This represents a growth of about 30.4 against the collection of Rs2,571 billion during the same period, last year.

The net collection for the month of January 2022 amounted Rs 430 billion, up 17.2 percent from Rs 367 billion in the same month the previous year.

After accounting for book changes, these values would improve even further by the end of the day.

The gross collection, on the other hand, grew by 30.6 percent from Rs 2,705 billion to Rs 3,533 billion in the first seven months (July2021 to January 2022) of the current fiscal year. Similarly, refunds disbursement increased by 35.9% to Rs182 billion in the first seven months of this fiscal year, compared to Rs134 billion the previous year.

FBR has introduced a number of innovative interventions, both at policy and operational level, with a view to maximise revenue potential through digitisation, transparency, and taxpayers' facilitation, as per the FBR statement.

It added that the measures had not only resulted in ensuring the ease of doing business but also translated in a healthy and steady growth in revenue collection.