ISLAMABAD, Sept 14: The Central Board of Revenue (CBR) has set Rs90 billion tax revenue target for the first quarter (July-September) of the current financial year against Rs81 billion projected for the same period of last fiscal.

And the tax authorities collected Rs80.3 billion during the first quarter of last year, an official source in the CBR told Dawn on Saturday.

The break-up of the target for the July-Sept period showed that Rs23.12 billion collected during July 2002 was considered as target of the said month. Furthermore, the target of Rs29.5 billion had been set for August and Rs37 billion for September, respectively.

According to the official, the tax authorities collected Rs29.5 billion during August 2002 against Rs26.79 billion the same month last year, showing an increase of 11.86 per cent.

The tax authorities will have to collect an additional amount of Rs4.665 billion during the current month to achieve the target of Rs37 billion set for September 2002 against the last year’s collection of Rs32.335 billion during the same month.

Official figures made available to Dawn showed that the revenue receipts increased by 14.2 per cent to Rs53.12 billion during July-August period of the current financial year against Rs46.492 billion revenue collected during the same period last year.

The figures showed that the two sources of taxes — direct taxes and central excise duty did not show any tangible growth in the first two months of the current financial year in comparison to the same period of the last year.

However, it was only the sales tax and customs duty that registered a marginal increase in revenue collection in comparison to the same period of the last year.

The revenue collection had already declined by 2 per cent to Rs46.49 billion during the July-August period of the financial year 2001-02 against Rs47.45 billion netted during the same period of the financial year of 2000-01.

Further break up showed that the tax authorities collected Rs11.821 billion under the head of direct taxes during the first two months of the current financial year against Rs11.398 billion over the corresponding period of the last year, showing a marginal increase of 3 per cent.

The tax authorities collected Rs26.848 billion under the head of sales tax against Rs22.579, showing an increase of 18.9 per cent, while Rs8.409 billion were collected under the head of customs during the same period this year against Rs6.504 billion collected over the corresponding period of last year, showing an increase of 29.3 per cent.

And the tax authorities collected Rs6.051 billion under the head of central excise duty (CED) during the July-August period of the current financial year against Rs6.011, showing a marginal increase of 0.7 per cent.