RECORDER REPORT

MULTAN: Federal Board of Revenue failed to achieve the targets fixed for 2016-17 in spite of employing all tactics and delaying the issuance of refunds describing it concerning and discouraging.

President of Multan Chamber of Commerce & Industry (MCCI), Khawaja Jalaluddin Roomi and members said that Parliament had approved the unrealistic revenue target in previous budget which could not be achieved in spite of realising advance taxes from corporate sector and delaying the payment of refunds.

They claimed that billions of rupees had been stuck up in refunds of sales tax, income tax, Customs rebates and other taxes and levies.

Recent unethical and harsh move of FBR to roll back all pending refunds payment orders of five export oriented sectors: textile, leather, carpets, surgical and sports goods is a lethal attempt to destroy value-added textiles and shatter Pakistan’s textile exports.

Roomi said that government had fixed the revenue target of Rs 3.621 trillion which was later revised as Rs 3.521 trillion but FBR could collect only Rs 3.330 trillion. He said that the gravity of situation demands immediate intervention of Prime Minister of Pakistan to release textile exporters refunds.

He lamented that the role of FBR officials remained unproductive as 23,000 FBR officials never achieved the budgetary revenue collection targets and they have been miserably failed to broaden the tax base while registering new tax payers.