ISLAMABAD  -   The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) has surpassed the tax collection target of seven months by Rs35 billion. The FBR collected Rs5150 billion against the target of Rs5115 billion for the first 7 months (July to January) of the current fiscal year. It has collected Rs3973 billion during the corresponding months of the previous year. During January 2024, the FBR collected Rs681 billion against Rs545 billion collected during Jan 2023. It is worth mentioning here that the government has set tax collection target at Rs9.415 trillion for FY24 as against the revised collection of Rs7.2tr in FY23, showing an increase of 30 percent. The government hopes to achieve the target based on the projected economic growth of 3.5pc, average inflation of 21pc and some revenue measures. The autonomous growth in revenue — to come from GDP growth and inflation — is projected at Rs1.76tr in 2023- 24. The ministry of finance in its recent report stated that during the first six months of the current fiscal year, the consolidation measures helped in improving the revenues relative to expenditure. There is a consistent upswing in revenue collection from both tax and non-tax collection. Particularly, tax revenue performance shows the efficacy of both tax policy and administrative measures. With the current pace of tax collection, FBR is poised to achieve the set target of tax collection by the end of the current fiscal year. The significant challenge is higher markup payments due to the high policy rate leading to a sharp rise in current expenditures. To address this challenge, the government is putting all its efforts into controlling non-markup spending through austerity measures which is evidenced by the rise in primary surplus during Jul-Dec FY2024. However, due to mounting markup payments in response to high policy rates, the expenditure is expected to remain under pressure during the current fiscal year.