ISLAMABAD - The government's heavy reliance on indirect taxes has brought in revenue of Rs 66 billion in July, the first month of the new financial year, which is 5.3 per cent of the total revenue target of the year. Federal Board of Revenue on Thursday announced that it collected Rs 66 billion in July 2008, showing a growth of 29.7 per cent over the same month of the last financial year. The government has set the revenue target for the financial year 2008-09 at Rs 1250 billion, hoping to attain a growth of 22 per cent over the previous year. The indirect taxes again remained a major source of collection. The FBR pooled Rs 17.3 billion in direct taxes, which are only 1/4th of the total monthly collection. On the other hand, the monthly indirect taxes collection stood at Rs 48.7 billion, 74 per cent of the monthly collection. The tax authorities could collect only 3.5 per cent of the total direct taxes in July. The annual direct taxes target is Rs 496 billion. The FBR collected over six per cent of the total indirect taxes. The FBR accumulated 6.7 per cent of the total sales tax target. The annual sales tax target is Rs 472 billion. The Excise and Customs Duty collection also remained above six per cent of their annual targets. An official of the FBR told TheNation that major reason on reliance on indirect taxes was that the tax authorities were unable to net big business firms, which were cheating the Board. "The FBR does not know its customers, which has become its major weakness", said the official. During the last financial year 2007-08, the government had set the revenue target at Rs 1025 billion, which it revised downward to Rs 1000 billion. It stated that political uncertainty and power outages were hampering industry, which ultimately hurt the tax collection. By June 30, 2008, the government ended up with Rs 1004 billion collection. Over 60 per cent of the total collection came from indirect taxes.