Finance Minister Senator Ishaq Dar while appreciating the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) efforts, urged the board to meet the tax revenue target that was set at the beginning of the current fiscal year. Chairing a meeting on the matters pertaining to FBR here, the minister said that strong tax revenue collections will play an important role in achieving higher, sustainable and inclusive economic growth.

Finance Minister said that accession to the The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters has enabled Pakistan to benefit from automatic exchange of information for tax purposes with other countries that are signatories to the Convention.

Earlier, Akhtar Khan, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Revenue, briefed the Finance Minister on the performance of FBR.

He apprised the Finance Minister that FBR was actively working on the implementation of the remaining steps under the OECD Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, which Pakistan became a signatory to in September 2016.

He informed the Minister that all formalities to sign the Multilateral Competent Authority Agreement on Automatic Exchange of Financial Account Information (MCAA), which is one of the remaining steps to be implemented under the said OECD Multilateral Convention, are almost complete. The meeting was also attended by senior officials of FBR and the Ministry of Finance.

Copyright Associated Press of Pakistan, 2017