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The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has reported an interim revenue shortfall of Rs 601 billion during the first eight months (July to February) of the current fiscal year 2024-25. In February alone, the shortfall stood at Rs 133 billion.
On Friday night, a senior FBR official revealed that during this period, the FBR collected a total interim tax revenue of Rs 7,344 billion, whereas the target was set at Rs 7,947 billion. This resulted in a cumulative shortfall of Rs 604 billion over the eight-month period. In February 2025, the FBR generated Rs 850 billion in revenue, falling Rs 133 billion short of the monthly target of Rs 983 billion.
It is worth noting that in the first seven months (July to January) of the fiscal year, the FBR had already recorded a shortfall of Rs. 468 billion. The primary factors contributing to this deficit include a stable exchange rate, lower-than-expected inflation, sluggish large-scale manufacturing, and slow GDP growth.
According to sources, the policy measures worth Rs 1.3 trillion, introduced under the Finance Act 2024 in the 2024-25 budget, have failed to yield the expected results. This underperformance is mainly attributed to changing market dynamics in the real estate sector, shifting trader behavior, and estimation errors.
Despite these challenges, officials remain optimistic about tax collection improving in the last four months of the fiscal year (March to June 2025). They anticipate that natural economic growth will help stabilize revenue collection, preventing further losses.
