PESHAWAR, Aug 5: The NWFP government missed the Rs4.05 billion provincial own receipts (PORs) target for the financial year 2002-03 with a big margin, undermining its commitments with the international donor agencies viz-a-viz improving revenue generation capacity.

In line with its commitments with the World Bank and other international financial institutions, the province was required to record improvement in its internal resource base by increasing receipts under various heads of PORs and expanding the scope of user charges during the financial year 2002-03.

The NWFP government recorded a total collection of about Rs3.5 billion — missing the Rs4.05 billion target by a margin of over Rs500 million, said a senior government functionary.

The PORs target for the financial year 2002-03 had been fixed at Rs4.077 billion which was later brought down to Rs4.05 billion under the revised budgetary estimates.

None of the successive provincial governments — during the last ten years — managed to meet the annual PORs targets of their respective tenures owing to incapacity and inefficiency on the part of the tax collection machinery as well as high recovery targets, said one of the officials.

A senior finance manager of the province said the province would have missed the PORs target with a margin greater than the existing level of slightly over Rs500 million if Wapda had not released more than the amount it was supposed to release to the province on account of electricity duty — a provincial levy collected from electricity consumers by Wapda on behalf of the provinces.

In its revenue receipt estimates, the NWFP government had anticipated to raise Rs200 million under the head of electricity duty. In actual, the province received Rs300 million under the same head, as per its revised revenue receipt estimates reflected in the new financial year’s budget documents.

The province, said a CBR NWFP official, kept on putting a poor show by recording not up-to-the-mark revenue under the important heads of abiana, land tax and agriculture income tax, land revenue and a couple of other heads of PORs.