The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (GoKP) is investing in Merged Areas (MAs) to move towards a more formal and secure land tenure legal framework. To this end the Board of Revenue (BoR) has approved and initiated a pilot Project for the registration of land in seven sub-districts of MAs. To fully capture the benefits of investments in accurate land records data and land administration service delivery, interventions need to be accompanied by supporting legal, administrative and management reforms. Security of land tenure stimulates economic growth by encouraging landholders to leverage security of tenure for growth and investment, undertake land improvement and soil conservation measures, and invest in inputs to improve agricultural productivity.

LRMA aims for reforms for development of sustainability options to induce improvements in governance and a declining scale of subventions to land services through cost recovery from fees, taxes and added-value services, supporting BoR’s objective to “enhance the economic prosperity of the province by establishing Land Revenue Assessments and Recoveries of Land based revenue to create an efficient provincial resource mobilization system.

Agriculture is a large contributor to the economy of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (14% of provincial GDP) providing direct and indirect livelihood to a majority of the rural population, however the overall performance in terms of growth has remained poor and so have been collections of receipts from land. Recoveries from land revenue and stamp duty were reported at Rs. 1.300 billion and Rs. 0.670 billion respectively while those from Agriculture Income Tax were minuscule.

Agricultural land and incomes are taxable under the NWFP Land Tax and Agricultural Income Tax Ordinance, 2000 (Ordinance). The Ordinance allows the taxation of agricultural incomes; it also allows for tax to be collected as a land tax if the tax assessed as Agricultural Income Tax (AIT) is less than the tax calculated as land tax. However, the tax is collected largely as a land tax due inefficiencies and lack of capacities. Changing the current culture of tax collection from a land tax to an income based tax will require re-hauling of the land revenue administration requiring long term reforms. AIT comparable with income tax collection is estimated to add Rs. 2 billion while the 2022-23 projected budgeted AIT receipts from 1.83 million hectare of cropped land stands at Rs. 114 million.