Record Tk 980bn revenue shortfall for NBR in nine months

The widening gap has left the NBR far behind its nine-month revenue target despite a modest rise in collections

The government is grappling with a massive revenue deficit of nearly Tk 980 billion against its target for the first nine months of the current fiscal year, despite a marginal increase in collection compared with the previous year.

Data released by the National Board of Revenue (NBR) on Tuesday shows that the revenue growth in March was the lowest recorded in the 2025-26 fiscal year so far.

According to the NBR's updated figures, total revenue collection for the July-March period of FY26 stood at nearly Tk 2.88 trillion.

While this is higher than the nearly Tk 2.6 trillion collected during the same period in the previous fiscal year, it falls significantly short of the government's ambitions.

The revised revenue target set through February was almost Tk 3.86 trillion.

Consequently, the shortfall has ballooned to a record Tk 980 billion by the end of March.

The current deficit has already surpassed the total shortfall of the previous fiscal year (2024-25), which amounted to Tk 926 billion.

In that year, the NBR collected Tk 3.7 trillion against an original target of Tk 4.6 trillion.

The revenue growth has seen significant volatility throughout the current fiscal year.

After a promising start, the growth in March plummeted to 2.67 percent. This follows a weak January growth of 3.21 percent and a brief, unsustainable recovery in February with 8.16 percent.

By the end of the third quarter, the cumulative revenue growth stands at 11 percent.

This is a sharp decline from the first quarter, where revenue appeared to surge due to the "base effect" of the previous year's economic stagnation caused by the anti-discrimination protests, the mass uprising, and the subsequent change in government.

Revenue collection in the first quarter (July–September) grew by 20.80 percent, with the highest monthly growth recorded in July at 24.61 percent, followed by August at 18.03 percent and September at 20.15 percent.

In the second quarter (October–December), growth slowed sharply in October to 3.31 percent, before recovering somewhat in November to 15.41 percent and reaching 11.45 percent in December.

In the third quarter (January–March), the sector came under renewed pressure, with growth falling to single digits in February and hitting a record low in March.

Despite the widening gap, the government has set an ambitious revised target of Tk 5 trillion through the NBR for the current fiscal year -- higher than the original budget estimate of Tk 4.99 trillion.

Initially, the then finance advisor Salehuddin Ahmed had set a total revenue target of Tk 5.6 trillion from all sources.

This overall target represents 9 percent of the GDP.