An official revealed that the Federal Board of Revenue had issued notices to 295,708 people for not filing tax returns of which about 36,000 had now filed their returns but 60 per cent of them claimed “nil” tax payable, saying their income had arisen out of agriculture and foreign remittances. - File photo

ISLAMABAD: Hit by energy shortfalls and floods, the government on Monday formally reduced current year's economic growth rate target by 0.6 per cent to 3.6 per cent and announced decision to re-pledge Lahore-Islamabad Motorway to bridge financing shortfalls as flows from the United States and telecom sector seem short of budgetary projections.

A senior economic manager told newsmen at a background briefing that the limit for fiscal deficit set at 4 per cent of GDP in the budget had also been revised to 4.7 per cent even though most of the expenditures were squeezed below half-yearly targets. In the first six months (July-Dec) of the current year, the fiscal deficit has been estimated at 2.5 per cent of GDP which meant the government still had a good margin of containing it at around 2.2 per cent in the remaining six months.

He said the government would issue about Rs50 billion worth of Sukuk bonds against the motorway project that had recently matured an earlier bond. The valuation of the Lahore-Islamabad motorway that stood at about Rs100 billion at the time of earlier Sukuk a few years ago has gone up to Rs250 billion. He said the government was also considering raising more finances through commercial borrowing.

In reply to a question, the official said that the minister for water and power was making all out efforts to overcome procedural and legal issues to pass on 4.5 per cent increase in electricity tariff to consumers while gas development surcharge would be imposed on consumers, except domestic, in a few days to raise funds for major gas pipeline projects as the president had signed the bill passed by parliament.

The official revealed that the Federal Board of Revenue had issued notices to 295,708 people for not filing tax returns of which about 36,000 had now filed their returns but 60 per cent of them claimed “nil” tax payable, saying their income had arisen out of agriculture and foreign remittances. About 60 per cent of them showed their income coming from agriculture and another 10 per cent claimed income through remittances.

He said these returns had been shared with the provincial governments at a meeting of the National Finance Commission last week to follow up with these people to verify their claims and seek agricultural income tax if their claims were true.

The official said the Sindh government had shared a draft bill with stakeholders to increase tax yields through agriculture while the province wanted this tax on a unified rate for all provinces so that there was no political fallout in one part of the country.

He disclosed that Pakistan did not send bills after May this year to the US on account of coalition support fund for services it provided to the coalition forces in Afghanistan.