The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has continued to perform poorly in revenue collection as it, for the eighth consecutive month, has once again missed to attain its revenue collection target.
From July to February of fiscal year for 2015-16, the revenue shortfall stood at Tk13,511 crore from Tk11,200 crore achieved in January.
However, the collection posted a growth rate of 13.55% in the eight months compared to the same period of last the fiscal year.
Although the board has been witnessing an upward average growth trend in revenue collection, it has mobilised only Tk90,654 crore in the July-February period against the target of Tk1,04,165 crore, the provisional data shows.
All three wings-income tax, value added tax and customs-have failed to reach their respective targets. Income tax wing missed the target by the largest amount compared to the other two wings, which is Tk6,243 crore, followed by VAT wing of Tk5,895 crore and customs wing of Tk1,372 crore.
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 the pre-set targets.
Officials attributed the shortfall in target to sluggish overall economic activities, poor performance by large businesses 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. The average growth rate of revenue collection was 17.28% in last five years.
According to NBR officials, the revenue collection gets momentum in the last few months of the fiscal year as implementation of the government’s Annual Development Plan is held during the period.
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.