Revenue target falls short of Tk 20,000 cr

Zarif Mahmud : The revenue collection of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has increased in the first six months of the fiscal year. Growth is also in good shape. But the target was not achieved. As a result, the target of revenue collection in the current financial year 2023-24 has been reduced by about Tk 20 thousand crore. The revised target stands at Tk4 lakh 10 thousand crores. According to NBR sources, NBR has been given a revenue target of Tk430 thousand crore in the budget of the current financial year. But in the first six months of the fiscal year, there was a deficit of Tk 23 thousand 227 crores.

There is pressure to collect additional revenue in the current financial year. On the one hand, there is pressure to collect additional revenue of 5.5 percent of the GDP as per the terms of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan. On the other hand, external debt repayments are increasing, so there is pressure to raise resources from domestic sources. Besides, the size of the government’s budget is increasing every year. Along with that, there is the old pressure to provide money. In such a situation, the Budget Monitoring and Resources Committee of the Ministry of Finance has proposed to reduce the revenue collection target through NBR to Tk 4 lakh 10 thousand crores. Now the target reduction in Income Tax, Value Added Tax (Musak) or VAT and Customs is being analysed.
One of the conditions of the loan of $4.7 billion approved by the IMF is the condition of collection of 10.5 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) from the current fiscal year, which must be shown before the third installment is released. Accordingly, the IMF has given NBR a target of collecting at least Tk4 lakh crore.
According to NBR sources, a total of Tk 1 lakh 65 thousand 630 crores of duty-tax has been collected in the last six months of July-December. At that time, the collection target was fixed at Tk1 lakh 88 thousand 856 crores. An average of Tk27,500,605 crores has been collected in the last six months. But to achieve the revised target, an average of Tk40,723 crore should be collected every month. NBR has never before been able to collect so much duty and tax on such a consistent basis. Apart from this, NBR is also obliged to carry out several reforms by next June. One of the conditions of the IMF in the reform of the revenue sector is to reduce the income tax, value added tax (VAT) or VAT and the taxes which have been exempted year after year in the customs sector. The work should be started before next June to show its visible progress. A team led by NBR member Sams Uddin Ahmed is working for this purpose.
Recently, NBR has calculated the amount of concessions given in the income tax sector. According to the calculations of the financial year 2020-21, income tax exemption of Tk 1 lakh 25 thousand 813 crore is given annually in the country. Out of this, Tk85,315 crore corporate tax exemption is given at the organization level. The remaining Tk40 thousand crore are exempted in the case of individual taxpayers. According to NBR’s related report, tax exemptions are given in 97 sectors at individual and organization level.