New Delhi, June 8 (IANS) Pakistan’s Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has announced a massive revenue shortfall of close to Rs 684 billion during the first 10 months of the current financial year, raising concerns over the country’s fragile economy, according to a report in Maldives Insight.

“As Pakistan struggles with inflation, debt obligations and repeated International Monetary Fund scrutiny, the revenue crisis has become far more than a bureaucratic failure. It now sits at the centre of the country’s broader economic instability,” the report states.

The scale of the latest shortfall has once again drawn criticism towards the FBR, an institution long accused of inefficiency, corruption and administrative weakness.

According to recent reports and editorials published in Dawn, the FBR remained behind its collection targets from the very beginning of the financial year, despite aggressive taxation measures imposed on salaried individuals and formal businesses.

FBR claimed that part of the decline was due to disruptions in trade flows linked to the Middle East conflict, which affected import-related taxes and excise duties.

However, economic observers and Pakistani media reports noted that external factors alone cannot explain the failure to meet revenue targets year after year.

Successive governments have repeatedly announced reforms within the FBR, ranging from digitisation campaigns and organisational restructuring to stricter enforcement drives.

Yet, the institution’s reputation for inefficiency has remained largely unchanged. Business groups, tax experts and economists continue to accuse the agency of relying excessively on compliant taxpayers while failing to expand the tax base, the report points out.

It highlights that the crisis has become especially visible among salaried workers and formal sector businesses, which now face some of the highest effective tax burdens in Pakistan’s recent history. In contrast, large segments of the economy remain either lightly taxed or entirely outside the formal tax system.

Pakistan’s revenue crisis is increasingly viewed by economists and journalists as not only as an administrative problem but as a political failure rooted in decades of avoidance and compromise.

Powerful sectors, including agriculture, wholesale retail, real estate and segments of the professional class, continue to enjoy limited taxation despite contributing significantly to economic activity, the report added.

–IANS

sps/na