The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has initiated a drive to minimise revenue shortfall this fiscal.

The measures under the drive include realisation of fine and additional income tax from audited tax files and readjustment of taxes on some essential products.

The revenue board will also expedite the process of disposing of tax-related cases to get a better amount of income tax and customs duties, a high official of the NBR said Thursday.

Income tax officials in last fiscal selected around 9,000 income tax files, including corporate tax ones, from across the country to audit those in order to find out difference between the taxpayers' ability and their actual payment.

But the means yielded a little benefit due to political interference by the immediate-past alliance government, the NBR official said preferring anonymity.

The initiative to reassess the selected tax files will bring a huge amount of money as fine and additional taxes, NBR officials hope.

Disposal of over 2000 tax-related cases will also help earn a huge amount of income tax, said another official who deals cases of the NBR.

The government may soon readjust rates of tax on imported sugar and some other essential products to augment revenue income.

Officials also said if the verdict on the case on collection of VAT on SIM cards, which is yet to be disposed of, comes in favour of the government, it would give a boost to the revenue. Such a collection was suspended in October last year after the mobile phone operators sued

Finance Adviser Dr Mirza Azizul Islam earlier at a meeting with the NBR officials said the government would definitely fail to achieve the revenue target this fiscal, describing the target set by the previous government as 'ambitious'.

The target was set at Tk41,055 crore for the 2006-07 fiscal against the last fiscal's Tk35,652 crore.

During the first half of the current fiscal, the growth of income tax and VAT collection recorded at 21.05 percent and 13.85 percent respectively. But the growth of customs duties was only 1.01 percent.

In the July-January period, the NBR collected Tk18,772 crore revenue against the target of Tk23,948 crore, showing a shortfall of over Tk5,000 crore .

The customs department was given a target of collecting Tk18,600 crore revenue during the current fiscal. But only Tk8,686 crore revenue was collected with a shortfall of Tk2,163 crore from the target of Tk10,850 crore set for the July-January period.

Our Benapole correspondent adds: an NBR team headed by NBR Member (Customs) Rashidul Hassan held separate meetings yesterday with the officials of Benapole land port and the leaders of C&F Agent Association in a bid to increase revenue collection and speed up export and import through the land port.

The NBR also directed all officials concerned to take punitive measures against those involved in irregularities and tax evasion.