Published in Daily Sun on Tuesday, 3 June 2014.
Revenue collection to see huge shortfall in target
Rahat Rafe
The grand alliance government is going to see a huge shortfall in collecting the revenue during this fiscal. In the last year of its previous tenure, the government also failed to achieve the target of collecting revenue in 2012-2013.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) will have to collect Tk 34,206.82 crore during May-June period, the last two months of the current fiscal to meet its target of earning revenue Tk 125,000 crore for the current fiscal. It would be impossible, analysts opined.
In that case, this would be the second consecutive year for the ruling government in meeting its revenue collection target, they said.
According to information, the NBR has so far collected Tk 90,704.50 crore revenue during July-April period of the current fiscal, which is Tk 9000 crore per month in an average.
If the current trend continues, the government will see a shortfall of around Tk 34,000 crore, meaning the tax department should have to realise Tk 17,000 crore per month during the rest two months of this fiscal.
Though analysts expressed concern that the tax department would not be able to realise such a huge amount in these two months, NBR officials are optimistic to achieve the target.
Ghulam Hossain, NBR Chairman, at a recent programme said the only task that the NBR does is to collecting revenue as per its goal and NBR must reach its target.
A recent study of the Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD) suggests that NBR should raise collection by 34.4 percent during the last months of the current fiscal to meet the set target. However, the revenue collection data for May 2014 is not available yet.
NBR data shows that the government has experienced a shortfall of around Tk 3,000 crore during last fiscal as the board had collected total Tk 1,08,614 crore against the target of Tk 1,12,259 crore.
The previous grand alliance government was successful in achieving revenue collection target during the first four fiscal years, but 2012-13 was an exception.
During the fiscal 2009-2010, the revenue collection stood at Tk 62,007 crore, surpassing the target of Tk 61,000 crore.
In 2010-2011 fiscal, the country’s revenue income amounted to Tk 79,092 billion against the target of Tk 75,600 crore.
The government in the fiscal year 2011-2012 had also exceeded revenue collection target by fetching Tk 95,058 crore against the target of Tk 92370 crore.
In the fiscal year 2012-2013, NBR failed to reach the revenue collection target.
Analysts and NBR officials said that the revenue collection was hampered severely in 2013 due to political turmoil.