PRA gets back Rs4.5 billion from NBP

LAHORE: Punjab Revenue Authority (PRA) got back Rs4.5 billion amount from the National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) which was wrongly deposited to the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) account due to the inefficiencies at NBP branches.

According to the reconcile audit report of the NBP and PRA, 19 branches of the NBP including eight from the central region, one corporate branch, five each of east region and Islamic banking were found to have wrongly posted the PRA receipts to the FBR accounts during tax years 2012 to 2016, amounting to over Rs4.5 billion in total. An international audit of the PRA found the discrepancies and pointed those out to the higher officials in the authority. On the instruction of the competent authority, the PRA has initiated cross verifications of the e-receipts submitted to it by the taxpayers and amount deposited by the respective branches to the PRA account on respective dates. The reconciliation was initially started with two branches, which admitted the fault of wrong posting of the PRA receipts by its officials into the FBR account due to negligence and misunderstanding. Further, the reconciliation of the accounts was extended to all 169 branches.

Physical cross examination was jointly conducted by the NBP and PRA officials who concluded that NBP wrongly posted almost Rs4.5 billion tax receipts of the provincial exchequer to the national kitty.

The official said when the case of the wrongful posting was highlighted almost a year back, and NBP officials admitted the fault, vis-e-vis deposited almost Rs2 billion to the PRA account from FBR account. However, the FBR took strong stance on it and forcefully managed to get back Rs2 billion deposited by the NBP to PRA. After that the PRA took up the issue with the highest forum and brought the issue in the notice of the SBP too.

According to the documents available with The News, In March 2019, the NBP through a letter sought the permission of the SBP to deposit back Rs4.5 billion to the PRA account. According to the letter, a joint reconciliation report submitted by NBP and PRA to the SBP stated that both agreed that during July 2012 to December 2016, a total amount of Rs4,569,858,198 being PRA receipts were wrongly credited to the FBR.