PESHAWAR, Aug 6: NWFP government is not likely to meet even the provincial own receipts’ revised target for the 2001-02 financial year, according to official sources.
Initially, the government had posted its PORs target for the 2001-02 financial year at Rs3.692bn.
However, it was brought down by around Rs104m after the government fixed the same at Rs3.591bn under the revised revenue receipts estimates for the 2001-02 financial year.
The target was brought down after the provincial finance managers realized that the province might not be able to meet the initially set PORs target due to poor performance of several of the provincial government’s tax and non-tax heads.
However, after a passage of one month of the new financial year, said the sources, that there appeared to be a realization among the provincial government cadres that the province might not be able to meet the revised PORs target due to massive shortfall recorded by the excise department and the Board of Revenue.
“It seems that the provincial government is not in a position to achieve even the revised PORs target for the financial year ended on June 30, last,” said the senior government functionaries.
The sources said that the provincial government was not likely to recover more than Rs3.2bn collectively under all the heads of PORs.
If it happens so, according to the sources, the province would miss the revised PORs target by over Rs350m.
The gap between the actual recoveries and the revised PORs target for the 2001-02 financial year, said the sources, might well be much more than Rs350m when the provincial government’s financial accounts for the 2001-02 financial year got finalized by the close of the current fiscal year — in line with the past.
According to the sources, the provincial government had fixed the 2000-01 financial year’s PORs’ revised target at Rs3.6 bn. However, as a result of actualization of the PORs figures — completed by the close of the 2001-02 financial year — the government came to know that it could not meet even the PORs’ revised target for the 2000-01 financial year. At the finalization of the provincial accounts the province raised a total of Rs2.98bn through PORs during the 2000-01 financial year.
“Though the provincial government had fixed the PORs target for the 2001-02 financial year at a much lower side to keep it at a realistic level, even the revised target appeared to be a daunting task for the tax collection machinery,” said the official sources.
These sources said that the gap between the PORs’ revised target and the original receipts recorded during the 2001-02 financial year at this point of time appeared to be at the lower side.
According to data made available to Dawn, the gap between the PORs’ revised target and receipts for the 2001-02 financial year would have been much more had the provincial finance managers not reflected the increase by Rs200m in the proceeds of electricity duty.
Initially, the receipts under the electricity duty head — a provincial tax Wapda collects on behalf of the provincial governments every month from electricity consumers — had been fixed at Rs202m for the 2001-02 financial year.
Whereas, the revised revenue receipts estimates for the 2001- 02 financial year have reflected the electricity duty proceeds during the outgoing financial year at Rs400m — an increase by Rs198m.
Though the provincial government reflected this increase under the electricity duty head, the fact remains that the province did not receive the Rs198m amount in cash as it was adjusted by Wapda against NWFP government departments’ electricity charges payable to the authority.