Revenue from registration and certification of vehicles by the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority in terms of target recovery has gradually been declining since 2009-10 financial year due to irregularities in the authorities, officials have said.
Laxity in realising taxes from vehicle owners, enforcing rules for obtaining registration and driving licence renewal and fitness certificates due to corruption in the BRTA caused the decline in target recovery of revenue earning, they said.
The target recovery in revenue earning of BRTA dropped to 70 per cent in 2012-13 financial year from 117.64 per cent in 2008-09 financial year, according to the data disclosed by Economic Review of the budget document for 2014-15 financial year.
With a lone exception, the BRTA earned more than the annual targets between 2003-04 and 2008-09 financial years, the data showed.
But the authority has been continuously failing to achieve the annual target of revenue since 2009-10 financial year.
The revenue earning of the BRTA against target, however, increased to 84 per cent in 2013-14 financial year, an official said.
Denying the allegation of negligence or corruption in BRTA, the regulatory authority’s chairman Md Nazrul Islam said that the performance of BRTA was improving in terms of annual revenue earning.
He said that the BRTA’s revenue earning had increased by about Tk 200 crore in last fiscal with respect to the earning in 2012-13 fiscal.
Contradicting the claims, a BRTA official said that the increase in total revenue earning did not have any significance in this regard as the fees for retro reflective number plates and registration of about 1.4 lakh new vehicles contributed considerably to the increased revenue earning.
In October 2012, the BRTA made retro reflective number plates mandatory for all motor vehicles.
BRTA earns revenue from taxes, registrations, retro reflective number plates, fitness certificates, driving licences and their renewals, number plates and fines realised during drives.
It sets annual target of revenue earning based on the cumulative sum of the number of vehicles adding a mean of the number of new vehicle entry in past two years, a BRTA official said.
The estimated number of new entry of vehicles usually fluctuates by 10 per cent per annum, he said.
In last 5 years, the number of new entry of vehicles ranged between 1.31 lakh and 1.9 lakh per annum, according to the data available with the BRTA.
BRTA recovered Tk 647 crore in revenue from about 13 lakh vehicles in 2008-09 financial year, which was 117.64 per cent of the target of Tk 550 crore, according to the data available with the Economic Review.
It was the highest recovery rate of revenue against target in last 11 years, a BRTA official said.
The situation changed in 2009-10 financial year when the BRTA recovered 97.34 per cent of the revenue target and it dropped to 78.74 per cent in the next financial year.
In 2010-11 financial year, BRTA earned Tk 685 crore in revenue against a target of Tk 870 crore.
In 2011-12 financial year, BRTA earned Tk 642 crore in revenue against a target of Tk 900 crore although about 1.7 lakh new vehicles received registration from the authorities paying fees.
The 2012-13 financial year was the worst for BRTA in terms of revenue earning against target when it was only 70 per cent, officials said.
In the year, BRTA recovered Tk 770 crore in revenue against a target of Tk 1,100 crore.
-The New age
