October 26, 2001	Friday	Shaba'an 8, 1422

ISLAMABAD, Oct 25: The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recommended to the government new recruitment policy for the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) as a part of the re-structuring the tax administration to make it user-friendly organization.

The Fund had pointed out in its report on tax administration reforms that the training in tax-related topics were well below the standards, said official sources here on Wednesday.

Currently about 75 per cent officers were directly recruited through CSS competitive examination, but it did not prepare them for the tax collection and administration purposes while recruitment of lower officers was heavily influenced by the interest groups, which resulted into appointment of unqualified and incompetent people, the report observed.

It was further pointed out that the vast majority of new recruits in the CBR had qualification in a scientific discipline, rather than law, accounting or management.

This again coupled with a system of induction training that placed primary emphasis on preparing recruits for the wider civil service, rather than the CBR and a level of remuneration that was described as well below a ‘living wage’ level, the end result was a work force of officials poorly equipped lacking motivation for the important tasks that confront them.

Keeping this in background, the sources said that the government would set up a Tax Administration Academy, which would offer common and specialised training programme to the CBR employees to enhance their efficiency to effectively run the affairs of the tax administration.

The Fund recommended that the CBR must recruit its staff from a graduate pool that was tested and ranked by the public service commission principally by level of intelligence.

Under the new policy, the Fund gave emphasis on appropriate technical qualifications and job stability, major changes to the system of induction training.

Similarly, according to the Task Force report on tax- administration, the government should evolve a strategy according to which the CBR staff may be hired in two categories the Executive Group (EG) corresponding to BPS17-22 which would be further divided into five grades and the Support Group (SG) corresponding to BPS 1-16, which was hoped to reduce the current 18 layer management structure to 11 layers.

Under the plan the EG would be responsible for technical and managerial tasks. The SG will assist them in activities like data entry, audit, appraisement, enforcement and valuation.