The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has collected gross revenues of Rs1,588 billion during the first two months of the current fiscal year 2024-25.

Against a target of Rs1,554 billion, the board has collected Rs1,456 billion in net revenue and refunds of Rs132 billion (44 per cent more than last year) were issued to the exporters to resolve their liquidity problems, said a press release issued on Sunday.

The board collected Rs593 billion under the head of domestic income tax as compared to Rs437 billion in July-August 2023, thereby showing a growth of 36 per cent.

A healthy year-on-year growth of 40 per cent was achieved in the domestic sales tax with a collection of almost Rs314 billion. Around Rs86 billion were collected as federal excise duty showing a year-on-year increase of 13%. As a result, a cumulative growth of almost 35 per cent has been achieved in the collection of domestic taxes.

In dollar terms, imports in the country have declined by 2.2 per cent in August 2024 as compared to August 2023. Similarly, the imports during August 2024 in Pakistani rupees value also showed a decline of seven per cent as compared to August last year.

Moreover, the import of high-duty items such as vehicles, and home appliances, as well as miscellaneous consumer goods such as garments, fabrics, footwear etc have reduced significantly, changing the import mix.

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This trend has impacted the collection of Customs duties as well as other taxes collected at the import stage. Despite a modest increase of four per cent in collection of Customs duties, FBR’s overall growth in net collection registered a 21 per cent increase on collection of the previous year.

“The FBR is likely to achieve the revenue targets of the first quarter as both the economic activity and imports are expected to show a healthy turnaround in the month of September due to lower policy rate and other interventions being made by the government in recent months,” it said.