June 13, 2002	Thursday	Rabi-us-Sani 1, 1423

ISLAMABAD, June 12: The tax authorities have conceded that they would not be able to collect more than Rs400 billion by the end of this fiscal year against the target of Rs442.3 billion.

Informed sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has told the Ministry of Finance that a shortfall of Rs42.4 billion would be occurred due to impact of prevailing tension in the region.

The tax authorities, however, collected Rs342.487 billion during the July-May period and to cross Rs400 billion mark, they were still required to collect Rs57.51 billion during the month of June, which was not an easy target, said the sources.

The CBR had collected Rs50 billion during the month of June last year.

A CBR official report available with this reporter showed the full year impact of negative factors on the revenue collection during this fiscal year.

Elaborating the factors which caused decline in revenue collection, the report said that a loss of Rs20.2 billion was registered due to effect of diminished imports. The effect has been calculated for customs duty, sales tax and withholding tax at import stage.

The total value of dutiable imports projected for the current fiscal was Rs440.7 billion, which was revised down to Rs394.3 billion. This resulted in a shortfall of Rs46.4 billion in value of imports during the year.

The original assumption was made that the dutiable imports in rupee terms will grow by 14 per cent, however, during the July-March period the dutiable imports grew by only 2 per cent.

The report says that slower than expected growth of the economy also resulted in loss to the tune of Rs16.2 billion.