The government's revenue collection in July-August -- the first two months of the current fiscal 24-25 has been 11 percent which lags behind year-on-year basis.
Tax officials however attributed this lagging to recent political unrest and the interim government's emphasis on avoiding tailored inflated figures.
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) logged Tk 42,106 crore in the July-August period of fiscal 2024-25. This resulted in a shortfall of around Tk 15,069 crore from its target for two months.
By the end of the fiscal 2024-25 the tax administration aims to collect Tk 480,000 crore in revenue. The interim government will not cut the revenue target set by the past government for this fiscal, Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed recently said.
"The slowdown in revenue growth in July-August period has resulted from political unrest," said Ashikur Rahman, principal economist of the Policy Research Institute.
The massive political unrest has not only ousted the Awami League government on August 5 significantly hampering the nation's economic activities, including trade through ports.
Rahman however thinks the NBR has been sincerely computing accurate data ever since the interim government has assumed power.
State bodies like the NBR, the Export Promotion Bureau and Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics have come under intensive scrutiny following recent mismatch in trade statistics.
They have so long allegedly provided inflated economic indicators in the past in an effort to project a scenario that everything was going well, he added.
Government offices are now trying to be as accurate as possible as data governance has become an issue of critical discussion across concerned stakeholders," he said.
"We are now producing revenue data in line with the Office of the Controller General of Accounts, which takes into account actual collections through iBAS++," an NBR official said.
The iBAS++, or Integrated Budget and Accounting System, is an integrated financial management information system used by the government.
The system essentially provides a complete picture of the financial assets and liabilities of the government at any given point in time. The year-on-year drop in revenue generation emanated from all three sources -- income tax, value added tax and customs duties.
Collection of duties from international trade fell 9.8 percent to Tk 14,485 crore owing to a fall in imports during the political turmoil. Income tax receipt also declined by 12 percent to Tk 18,634 crore.
Meanwhile, the collection of value added tax, the biggest source of revenue, fell 12 percent to Tk 16,028 crore.
