September 11, 2002	Wednesday	Rajab 3, 1423

ISLAMABAD, Sept 10: The annual revenue receipts has witnessed a loss to the tune of Rs5 billion due to the incident of the September 11 during the financial year 2001-02.

Official figures available with Dawn showed that the total revenue collection declined by 3.2 per cent in the first quarter (July-September) of the financial year 2001-02 in comparison to the same period of last year; 2.8 per cent in the second quarter (October-February), while it registered a growth 11.4 per cent in the third quarter (March-April).

This showed that the impact of September 11 was more pronounced in first and second quarter.

The indirect taxes—sales tax, customs duty and central excise duty—declined by 5.1 per cent in July-Sept and further to 11.6 per cent during the Oct-Feb period of the financial year 2001-02.

According to the statistics, the 9/11 hard hit customs, sales tax and withholding tax on import stage.

Customs collection was the main victim of the 9/11 incident declining substantially both in gross and net basis for a variety of reasons including the dip in volume of imports, appreciation of exchange rate and fall in unit volumes.

The customs duty fell by 23 per cent in the first quarter, 44.4 in the second quarter, 25.6 per cent in the third quarter and 3.9 per cent in the fourth quarter.

Tax wise break up showed that the sales tax collection in second quarter dropped by 0.4 per cent, however, it picked up by almost 27 per cent during third quarter.

The net collection of central excise duties during the year 2001-02 was Rs46.9 billion that showed a fall of 4.4 per cent over the same period of last year mainly because of the sluggish activity in the large scale manufacturing sector and reduction in the base value due to shifting of services to sales tax net.

Due to the 9/11 event, the collection of withholding tax declined by 6.1 per cent over the same period of last year, however, in general the direct taxes registered a growth in comparison to last year.