ISLAMABAD, May 1: The Federal Board of Revenue has further revised the revenue collection target to Rs2,050 billion from earlier Rs2,116bn, reflecting a shortfall of more than Rs66bn.

This will be the forth straight downward revisions in the revenue collection target of the tax machinery in the past 10 months of this fiscal year owing to slowdown in the economy and poor governance in the tax administration.

A well-placed source told Dawn that tax officials have formally informed the International Monetary Fund during their recent visit to Washington that it would hardly collect the revenue target of Rs2,050bn by June 30, 2013.

First it was revised to Rs2,231bn from budgetary target of Rs2,381bn for 2012-13. For the second time, the revenue collection target was revised downward to Rs2,193bn and then to Rs2,116bn.

The source said that the IMF did not disclose their estimate of revenue collection for the current fiscal year with the visiting delegation of Pakistan. However, the IMF officials did mention Pakistan’s failure to implement previous conditionalities like implementation of VAT etc.

The IMF did offer a programme, but it will be negotiated and agreed with the new government after May 11 general elections. “We are not expecting the new IMF programme before December 2013”, the source said who was privy to all meetings with the Fund officials.

The source further said that the IMF was also not interested to offer any package to be considered in the next budget 2013-14. The next budget will be worked out on the possible receiving of an installment of PTCL privatisation and repatriation of amounts from US that Pakistan spent on account of war against terrorism.

FBR has collected an amount of Rs1,508bn in July-April period of 2012-13 as against Rs1,426bn in the corresponding period of last year, reflecting an increase of 5.75 per cent.On monthly basis, FBR raised an amount of Rs156bn in April 2013 as against Rs145.795bn collected over the same month last year, showing an increase of 6.99 per cent.

To achieve the revised revenue target, FBR still has to collect Rs542bn in the next two months (May and June). Last year, FBR collected Rs456.834bn during the last two months, making the collection still ambitious. In case, FBR put some efforts the revise collection target is achievable, the source added.

All federal taxes are way behind from their respective targets for the current fiscal year, excluding collection from customs duties. If the situation remains politically unstable during the post-election period, the revenue collection would deteriorate further.