Pakistan misses tax collection targets by PKR 601 billion in eight months

Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), has missed its tax collection target by over PKR 600 billion ($2.1 billion) for the first eight months of the current fiscal year 2024-25.

A senior official of the FBR told Nukta that the FBR collected PKR 7,344 billion during the first eight months (July-February) of 2024-25 against the assigned target of PKR 7,947 billion, showing a gap of PKR 601 billion.

The tax collection of the FBR stood at PKR 850 billion during February 2025 against the target of PKR 983 billion, reflecting a shortfall of PKR 133 billion.

It is pertinent to note that the FBR had suffered a shortfall of PKR 468 billion during the first seven months (July-January) of 2024-25 due to the slowdown of growth in revenue collection anticipated at the time of the budget for 2024-25.

The assessment of the revenue collection pattern revealed that factors responsible for the revenue shortfall during this period included exchange rate stability, lower than expected inflation, slow recovery of the large-scale manufacturing sector, and less than expected low GDP growth rate.

The policy measures adopted in the Finance Act 2024 of PKR 1.3 trillion are also showing less than expected collection due to behavioral changes like in the real estate and traders' sectors, as well as estimation errors.

Officials said that growth is expected to pick up in the last four months of the current fiscal year, and hence, there will be no further loss in revenue collection on account of autonomous growth during March-June 2024-25.