Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on Friday asked the chief commissioners of the Federal Board of Revenue to make utmost efforts to achieve this year’s revenue target.
Addressing the chief commissioner’s conference, Dar appreciated the FBR’s performance last fiscal year despite the challenges of reduced oil prices, drop in commodity prices and low inflation faced by it. The focus of this conference was to learn from last years’ experience and devise a strategy for current financial year. The issues like handling of court cases, broadening of tax base, effective utilisation of data, facilitation and education of taxpayers, motivation of FBR’s workforce, increasing numbers of tax filers, making sales tax registration easier and localized were thoroughly discussed.
The minister commended the FBR on increasing its revenue collection by 33 percent and increasing the tax to GDP ratio from 8.4 percent to 9.45 percent in last two years. He emphasized the importance of revenue generation in national development and urged the FBR to do its utmost to achieve next year’s revenue target. He said simplification of procedures for filing tax returns was important to facilitate and encourage prospective tax payers and expanding the tax net. “We need to focus on this aspect as much as possible.” He said the government through a sustained reforms process had proved all economic pundits wrong who had predicted that Pakistan’s default was imminent. He said international rating agencies were now praiseworthy of Pakistan’s economic performance and international financing institutions had been re-engaged.
