Shamshad Akhtar chairs meeting to deliberate measures to digitize national economy

Caretaker Federal Minister for Finance, Revenue, Economic Affairs And Privatization, Shamshad Akhtar Thursday visited Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) headquarters and chaired a meeting to deliberate measures to automate its operations and to further enhance tax-to-GDP ratio.

Caretaker Federal Minister for IT and Telecommunications Dr. Umar Saif, Chairman FBR Malik Amjed Zubair Tiwana, Members of the Board and senior officials from the Ministry of Finance, IT Division and Revenue Division attended the meeting, said a news release issued here.

The chairman FBR briefed the minister about measures being taken to automate and strengthen the revenue collection mechanism of the board. During the meeting, the caretaker Finance Minister emphasised on utilising modern technology to digitise the national economy to maximise revenue collection.

The minister said that enhancing tax collection through technology and increasing tax-to-GDP ratio was top most priority of the government. She asked to work on war footing to address the issue of tax gap and use all available resources for this goal.

The minister for IT deliberated upon the availability of data with provincial and other state owned enterprises. It was decided that FBR would immediately obtain available data from other entities and leverage it to identify tax gaps and focus on potential taxpayers, who are still evading the tax net.

It was decided that FBR and Ministry of IT would cooperate and make all out efforts to digitize national data and expand the tax net.