ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue collected gross revenues of Rs605 billion in May, despite multiple challenges, it said in a statement released on Thursday.
The FBR said that against a target of 621 billion rupees, it collected Rs572 billion net revenue, while refunds amounting to Rs33 billion were issued in May.
The board collected 205 billion rupees in May this year under the head of domestic income tax in contrast to 131 billion rupees in May 2022, thereby reflecting a growth of 57 per cent.
A healthy year-on-year (YoY) growth of 28 per cent was achieved in the domestic sales tax with a collection of about 100 billion rupees.
Almost 41 billion rupees were collected as Federal Excise Duty showing a YoY increase of 32 per cent. Domestic tax collection has achieved cumulative growth of nearly 44 per cent.
The statement said that FBR achieved its targets even though the GDP growth rate has been revised downward and the economy has slowed down. Domestic tax collection has achieved cumulative growth of about 44 per cent.
Such momentum could not be maintained on the import side due to extraordinary import compression. In US dollar terms, Pakistan’s imports declined by 37 per cent in May this year compared to May 2022.
In addition, the import of high-duty goods such as home appliances, vehicles, and miscellaneous consumer items like garments, footwear, fabrics, etc have been drastically decreased, changing the import mix.
FBR’s total growth
The statement added that it affected the collection of Customs duties and other taxes. Despite an 18 per cent fall in the collection of Customs duties and an 11 per cent dip in overall tax collection at the import stage, FBR’s total growth was registered at 16 per cent compared to the last year.
