Prime Minister, Imran Khan, praised the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) on Wednesday for exceeding the February revenue target. The target set for February by the FBR was 441 billion rupees. The Prime Minister took to his Twitter account to announce the big news of target being achieved by the Federal Board of Revenue. The tweet stated that “FBR successfully knocked down the February revenue target posting robust growth of 28.5 percent and a monthly growth of over 30 percent.”
Imran Khan communicated that his government was able to “subsidize petrol, diesel, and electricity and give relief” to the people because of the FBR’s performance. He on Monday announced an Rs10 per liter reduction in the prices of petrol and diesel as well as an Rs5 per unit cut in the electricity tariff, along with a bonanza of incentives in several areas of the economy.
The board exceeded its eight-month tax collection target by Rs268 billion but narrowly avoided missing the monthly target for the third month in a row after slowing down the disbursement of taxpayers’ refunds. Against the original but relatively low tax target of nearly Rs3.53 trillion, the FBR provisionally collected nearly Rs3.8 trillion during the July-February period of the current fiscal year, according to an FBR statement. However, the FBR’s performance was once again largely dependent on imports that contributed nearly 53% to the total collection, which helped camouflage the weaknesses in domestic sales tax collection.
Shaukat Tarin also took the news to his Twitter handle congratulating the FBR for achieving the target for February. In his tweet, he mentioned the same stats which were shared by the Prime Minister previously.