Dhaka: The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has planned to recover revenue from tax-related cases pending with various courts for years involving Tk 25,783 crore.

‘The NBR chairman has asked the officials concerned to take effective steps in this regard,’ a senior NBR official said.

He said NBR chairman Md Nojibur Rahman also asked the concerned officials to expedite the Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) process for settling the pending cases.

He gave the directives during a recent review meeting with the commissioners of income tax, VAT and Customs held at the NBR headquarters.

The number of pending income tax, VAT and customs cases in the High Court is 22,747, while the amount related with the cases is Tk 25,783 crore.

Among the cases, the income tax-related cases are highest while the maximum amount of money is stuck in VAT-related cases.

At the meeting, emphasis was given on utilizing the ADR system to settle the cases. As part of this initiative, separate focal point officials have been appointed for each wing, the official said wishing not to be named.

The NBR introduced ADR on 1 July 2012 to speed up disposal of the revenue-related cases through out-of-court settlement.

Some 375 cases have so far been settled through ADR involving revenue worth Tk 119.87 crore.

‘The NBR chairman has also asked the officials to take all-out efforts to realise the outstanding taxes,’ the NBR official said.

The meeting also discussed bringing the house owners and business entities which are now outside the tax net and VAT net under the respective ambit.

According to the officials, the NBR has decided to take the efforts as it got a gigantic target of Tk 176,370 crore for the 2015-16 fiscal against Tk 149,720 crore last year, but later it was reduced to Tk 135,028 crore in the revised budget.

‘To achieve the target, the NBR is very much cautious from the very beginning of the fiscal,’ he said.

This year, an amount of Tk 64,971 crore will come from income tax, while Tk 64,262 crore from VAT and Tk 18,752 from import duty.

The target for export duty has been fixed at Tk 37 crore, excise duty at Tk 1,239 crore and supplementary duty at Tk 25,875.

‘We're now under a little bit of pressure to realize the money as the target for this year is relatively higher,’ said the NBR official adding that the Finance Minister in his budget speech also said this target is 'highly ambitious'.

He also said the NBR will leave no stone unturned to reach the target.