March 4, 2006	Saturday	Safar 3, 1427

ISLAMABAD, March 3: The revenue collection will reach around Rs705 billion during the current fiscal year as against the projected target of Rs690 billion set for 2005-06, an increase of Rs15 billion over the target.

An official told Dawn on Friday that the target would be surpassed due to massive increase in imports of dutiable items during the period under review following rationalization of tariffs in the last budget.

The revenue proceeds stood at Rs416.334 billion during July-Feb period of the current fiscal year against Rs340.983 billion during the same period of the last year, indicating an increase of 22 per cent.

The official said that the CBR had projected in the last budget a growth of 16.7pc in revenue collection over the last year for achieving the target of Rs690bn set for the current fiscal year.

The current trend of 22 per cent growth in the revenue collection over the last year showed that if it was maintained in the next four months, the current fiscal year revenue collection would be in the range of Rs705 billion to Rs710 billion, the official said.

He said that the main reasons for the growth in revenue realization was due to high growth in all economic indicators mainly in industrial production.

The pending tax amounts stuck up in disputes at various forums would also be released during the current fiscal year, which would have an over all impact on revenue collection.

Another significant contributor to the revenue collection was the import of used and new cars following the relaxation of procedures and scaling down of duty and taxes.

The statistics showed that the import of used cars increased by over 45 per cent during the first half of current fiscal as against last year. While import of new brand cars rose by over 106pc during the period under review.

The CBR also planned to raise a huge amount of duty and taxes from the clearance of smuggled vehicles at a redemption fine of 30 per cent in addition to duty and taxes.