ISLAMABAD, Aug 1: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has delayed the announcement of collection figures for the first month (July 2005) of the current fiscal year. Informed sources told Dawn on Monday that the CBR perhaps for the first time had failed in announcing its monthly revenue collection figures on July 31 as it was facing certain shortfall.

The sources said that the major reason for the delay was that the CBR had already taken advance taxes from some of big taxpayers for reaching the Rs590bn target of the previous fiscal.

The adjustment of advance taxes against the liabilities of these taxpayers would result in low revenue collection in the forthcoming months of the current fiscal year, the sources added. CBR Official Spokesman Habib Fakhrudin told Dawn that the collection figures would be announced on Tuesday or Wednesday. He, however, did not mention the reasons for delaying the announcement of the figures. The CBR had projected to collect Rs37.8 billion during July 2005, which is Rs7.4 billion more than the target of same month of last year.