Revenue collection by the National Board of Revenue fell short of the target for the first eight months of current fiscal year by 4.5 per cent or Tk 3,114 crore mainly due to failure in achieving target by VAT and customs wing of the NBR, said officials.
Current political unrest, frequent hartals, sluggish trends in export and negative growth in import in July-February have taken toll on revenue collection in the period.
According to NBR data, the revenue board collected Tk 62,508 crore in July-February against the target of Tk 65,621 crore in the period.
In July-February, revenue earnings from VAT, customs duties and tax from other sources fell short by Tk 2,147 crore, Tk 1,392 crore and Tk 250 crore respectively from its target while collection from income tax succeeded its target by Tk 675 crore.
Revenue collection in the period, however, grew by 14.50 per cent compared with the same time of the last year.
At a news briefing after a meeting with the finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith at the NBR headquarters, NBR chairman Ghulam Hussain, however, said that they would be able to achieve the target by the end of fiscal year as they had taken lots of measures to boost the revenue collection.
He said that though revenue collection suffered due to political unrest and frequent hartals, there would be no shortfall in revenue collection target and hopefully the NBR would be able to succeed its target like previous years.
Muhith, however, said that revenue collection did not suffer because of hartals.
‘We have data till February and do not see any impact of hartals on revenue collection yet,’ he said after the meeting.
‘But we will know the impact after we get statistics of March,’ he said.
About the meeting, Muhith said that they discussed on issues that should be included in the next budget.
‘We know number of issues identified in the last four years. As it is the last year of the government, we are trying to address the issues properly,’ he said.
Hussain said it was a preparatory meeting for the next revenue budget that would be placed in the parliament on June 6.
‘The upcoming budget will give a possible direction about the framework of the budget for next few years.’ The finance minister instructed the revenue board to work on this issue, he said.
‘We will also revise existing import duty structure in the next budget to prevent tax evasion, misuse of bond facilities and prevent local industries,’ the NBR chairman said.
In July-February, the NBR collected Tk 20,985 crore from customs duties, Tk 23,110 crore from VAT, Tk 18,023 crore from income tax and Tk 388 crore from other sources.
The target of collection was Tk 22,377 crore, Tk 25,257 crore, Tk 17,348 crore and Tk 638 crore from customs duties, VAT, income tax and other sources respectively in the period.
The NBR officials said repeated hartals and political unrest were causing trouble for the business activities including export, import and trade in the country which were the main reasons for such a huge shortage.
Such a huge deficit makes the revenue board officials apprehended about the achieving the target of collecting Tk 1,12,259 crore in the current fiscal year set by the NBR.
The NBR chairman, however, said that they would be able to achieve the target by the end of fiscal year as they had taken a lot of measures including realising the dues from the government enterprises to boost revenue collection.
He said the revenue collection suffered due to political unrest and hartals as export-import and other business activities hampered due to such political programmes.
‘Government enterprises including Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, Titas Gas owe around Tk 2,800 to the NBR and we requested the enterprises to give our money,’ he said.
The NBR has also identified around 40,000 house owners who have no taxpayer identification numbers.
‘We will bring them under tax net,’ he said adding that small traders in the cities will also bring under income tax net.
The NBR has also taken some initiative to increase revenue collection from some specific sectors such as cigarettes, cement, plastic, and some sectors in imports with a hope of succeeding the target.
‘Traditionally we realise a big portion of the targeted revenue in June, last month of the fiscal year. So we hope to earn handsome amount of money in the month,’ he said.
Source: UNBConnect