ISLAMABAD: The first month of the fiscal year 2013-14 has witnessed a substantial growth of 25 per cent in revenue collection from a year ago, officials told Dawn on Friday.

The upward swing in revenue collection was expected because of new revenue measures mostly at source deduction of taxes taken in the budget 2013-14, reviving hopes that the revenue collection target for the current fiscal year will be achieved.

The provisional revenue collection has reached to Rs134 billion in July 2013 from Rs106.876bn collected during the same month last year, reflecting an increase of 25.2pc.

For 2013-14, government has projected Rs2475bn revenue collection target as against the collection of Rs1940bn for the fiscal year 2012-13, showing an increase of 27.5pc.

To achieve the current fiscal year target, government has imposed Rs210bn worth of new taxation measures in the budget.

Last year, the FBR revenue collection witnessed more than Rs440bn shortfalls in revenue collection.

A senior tax official told Dawn that FBR was expecting huge revenue from two policy measures of the present government—upward price adjustments in petroleum products, electricity tariffs etc.

This will jack up the inflation in the country, which will cross the double digit in the next few months. The increase in inflation as well as petroleum products prices will yield additional revenue for the government exchequer.

The government has projected inflation at 8pc which was already crossed in the first month of the current fiscal year. Last year, inflation was brought down to single digit which led to low collection especially in the sales tax.

Provisional figures shows that direct tax collection witnessed the highest growth of 73.44pc in July 2013 as its collection reached to Rs37.9bn this year from Rs21.85bn in the corresponding month of last year. The introduction of seven new withholding taxes, upward revision of existing tax rates of many other withholding taxes have yielded the dividends for the FBR in the first month.

Despite increase in the general sales tax rate from 16pc to 17pc, the GST collection witnessed a modest growth of 10.53pc in July 2013 from a year ago. The GST collection edged up to Rs70.6bn in July 2013 from Rs63.873bn during the same month last year.

The federal excise duty witnessed a growth of 46pc as its collection reached to Rs8.9bn in July 2013 from Rs6.089bn over the corresponding month of last year. The increase is mainly driven by upward revision in the tax rates for cigarettes, and introduction of capacity based tax on aerated waters etc.

The customs collection recorded an increase of 9.56pc to Rs16.5bn in July 2013 from Rs15.06bn over the corresponding month of last year. The decline may be because of slow down in imports proceeds. The imports become costlier owing to massive depreciation of the rupee.