The top brass of UBG leadership commended Shaukat Tarin Minister for Finance & Revenue and Mr. Asim Ahmed Chairman FBR for exceeding July tax collection target by a wide margin and achieving record revenue collection of Rs 413 billion- an increase of over 36 percent from last year figure – in July 2021.
According to a statement issued by UBG Central Spokesperson Gulzar Feroze, UBG Patron General SM Munir elaborated “The increase in tax collection is not only historically highest in the month of July 2021 but has also surpassed the monthly (July 2021) target by about 22 percent, which proves that the Government’s efforts to make positive changes in the FBR and for documentation of economy has started yielding fruitful results”.
Zubair Tufail President UBG appreciated the Board for successfully meeting the tax collection target of Rs 4691 billion for the outgoing year 2020-21 and managed to collect Rs.4725 billion showing an increase of 18.2 percent as compared to last year revenue collection of Rs.3997 billion and hoped that the position of tax collection and tax-to-GDP ratio which is one of the lowest in the world will further improve in the years to come. For this purpose the UBG proposed to broaden the tax base, distortionary exemptions and concessions be removed, new tax prayers be identified through digitization, reliance on indirect taxes and issues in improving tax-administration should be properly taken care of as they have adversely affected tax-to-GDP ratio which is one of the lowest, about 10% , in the world.
They said that the country ‘s economy had witnessed resilience even in the unfavorable circumstances particularly in the wake of COVID- 19 and its different kinds of variants which have generally and globally affected economic growth thus reducing tax collection in almost all the countries irrespective of developed, under developed and developing.
They urged the Chairman FBR that tax contribution of all the three major sectors of Pakistan’s economy i.e agriculture, industry and services should be proportionally increased according to their share in GDP. “For example the agriculture sector accounted for 19.4 percent in GDP in 2020 while contributing less than 2 percent in tax “, they elaborated.