ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s tax authority on Thursday claimed to have crossed the Rs3 trillion mark in revenue collection and is all set to achieve the original budgetary target for the outgoing fiscal year.

The 2015-16 is the first year in the three-year rule of the PML-N when the budgetary projected revenue target would be met. The trend gave the government confidence not to revise down the revenue collection projection.

The FBR collected a provisional revenue of Rs3.090 trillion in the outgoing fiscal year as against Rs2,589.2bn collected during the same period last year, reflecting an increase of 19.31 per cent.

The government has projected the revenue target of Rs3,103.7bn in budget 2015-16.

Heavy reliance on regulatory duties and withholding taxes has helped the FBR raise the size of collection during the outgoing fiscal year.

An official source told Dawn that more than Rs22bn revenue is already in the system, which will be cleared late night.

The revenue collection, the official said will cross the figure of Rs3,112bn when the figures will be finalised tomorrow. This means the budgetary revenue collection target of the year 2015-16 will be surpassed by over Rs8bn, the official said.

A tax official said the data is provisional and that revenue collection will go up after finalisation of the figures. “We are still collecting and compiling information from various banks and the State Bank regarding deposits of taxes,” the official said, requesting anonymity.

The deadline for the payment of duty and taxes was 10:00pm on June 30 across the country, the official added.

Tax wise break-up showed that revenue collection has witnessed growth in income tax, sales tax and federal excise duty. The growth is higher in income tax followed by sales tax on imports.

On the customs side, the collection is also going up and expected to cross the figure Rs400bn when the figures were finalised till late night.

The collection of original budget revenue target will help the government to meet the expenditures and avoid ballooning fiscal deficit. The tax-to-GDP ratio will go up to 10.1pc in the outgoing fiscal year from 9.4pc in the previous year.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016