NBR faces Tk 38,000 cr target fall in FY 2023-24

Rafiqul Islam Azad: The government witnessed a huge revenue deficit of over Tk 38,000 crores at the end of the just-ended fiscal year against its revised target, according to sources. Experts blamed the weak and corrupt administration of the NBR for not achieving the revenue targets like in other fiscal years.

The National Board of Revenue (NBR), the sole agent for revenue collection, has ended the fiscal year 2023-24 with a huge revenue deficit, though it achieved a growth of 12.17 percent. The state-run organization could not fulfill the target; instead, the deficit stood at Tk 38,157.77 crore.

Sources in the NBR said that the organization managed to collect 90 percent of the revenue of the revised annual target in the outgoing financial year. The revised target for that financial year was Tk 410,000 crores. In the budget, the NBR’s actual revenue target was Tk 430,000 crore.

A senior NBR official told this correspondent that imports were discouraged from the beginning of the last financial year. The government imposed restrictions on opening LCs. Because of that, there was a big negative impact throughout the year, he said, adding that still, the overall revenue collection growth is satisfactory, but in the end, the target was not achieved.

He further said the target of revenue collection in the current financial year seems to be a bigger challenge. According to NBR statistics, in the last financial year, a total of Tk 371,842.23 crore was collected. Out of this, the NBR collected Tk 100,378.17 crore from imports, Tk 140,439.04 crore from VAT, and Tk 131,025.02 crore from income tax.

Among the targets, a maximum of 15.60 percent growth was achieved in income tax collection, while 11.97 percent growth in VAT and 8.25 percent growth was achieved in imports. Incidentally, the new budget has estimated a total revenue of Tk 541,000 crore in the fiscal year 2024-25, which is 9.7 percent of the GDP. Out of this, Tk 480,000 crores will be collected through the National Board of Revenue, and there is a target of collecting Tk 61,000 crore from other sources.

Among NBR’s targets, Tk 175,620 crore will come from income tax and tax on profit and capital, Tk 182,783 crore from VAT, Tk 64,278 crore from supplementary duty, Tk 49,464 crore from export duty, and Tk 1,980 crore from other taxes, according to sources.

Talking to this correspondent, Executive Director of the Policy Research Institute (PRI) Dr. Ahsan H. Mansur said, as they predicted at the beginning of the last fiscal year, that 50-70 percent of the revenue target wouldn’t be achieved, and it became true at the end of the fiscal year.

Describing NBR administration as a weak and corrupt one, he said, “It will never be possible to achieve the revenue target under this weak and corrupt administration of the NBR.” The leading economist suggested changing the administration and introducing an automated system to collect revenue to reach even a target with a larger amount.