National Board of Revenue has missed to achieve its revenue collection target in the first seven months of this fiscal year. The shortfall stood at Tk12,003 crore during the period.
However, the collection saw an average growth of 13.35% in the seven months.
Although the board has been witnessing an upward average growth trend in revenue collection, it has mobilised only Tk79,165 crore in the July-January against the target of Tk91,168 crore, the official data shows.
All three wings - income tax, value added tax and customs - have failed to reach their respective targets. Income tax wing missed target by the largest amount of other two wings, which is Tk5,452 crore, followed by Vat wing Tk5,060 crore and customs wing Tk1,491 crore.
The NBR usually collects 35%-40% revenue in the first six months of any fiscal and the rest 60%-65% in the rest six months.
According to NBR officials, the government earlier used to fix the higher revenue targets in the last six months of any fiscal year.
But from this fiscal the monthly average revenue targets were fixed for 12 months equally and this could have led to the missing of target.
Officials attributed the shortfall in target to sluggish overall economic activities, poor performance by large businesses including banks, telecom, manufacturing and services, and fall in consumption by consumers.
The NBR is assigned to mobilise Tk176,371 crore in the current fiscal year with a 29% growth from last fiscal.
Though the economists termed the target “ambitious”, the NBR is still quite confident about achieving the target by the end of the year.
The NBR hopes that the revenue collection achievement will be easier if progress of Annual Development Programme (ADP) implementation becomes satisfactory, export income rises, import flow increases and the investment in the country sees a further growth.
NBR has taken up a number of initiatives including resolving pending cases through Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), expansion of the tax base by identifying growth centres through partnership with stakeholders and through the ongoing tax survey.