Punjab’s non-tax revenue receipt fails to meet target

Ruchika M Khanna 

Tribune News Service 

Chandigarh, December 12 

Punjab’s non-tax revenue has failed to match up to the targets set by the government in its budget proposals for 2018-19, giving jitters to the cash-starved state government. 

The Punjab Government had doubled its target of non-tax revenue receipts for this fiscal against the target for 2017-18. The state government had set a target to collect Rs 10,248.85 crore this year as against the total non-tax revenue receipts of Rs 5,096.18 crore in 2017-18.

The rationale behind increasing the non-tax revenue seemed to be a 58 per cent increase in non-tax revenue in the 2017-18 financial year over the collection made in 2016-17.

Though there was scepticism on this high non-tax income projection for the ongoing fiscal even when the Budget proposals were announced, the government had said that they would increase fee levied for various government services — something that has not happened so far. This also means that the Budget will have a high resource gap by the end of this year.

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal had also maintained at the time of presenting his Budget proposals that he was pegging on all departments routing their non tax revenues — fee collected for providing services by the Revenue Department, Health Department, Education Department, Transport and Tourism Departments — through the consolidated fund of the state. 

As a result, the total non-tax revenue of the state collected in this fiscal is just 27.37 per cent of the total targeted non-tax revenue for this year. Comparatively, the total non-tax revenue collected in the state between April-October 2017 was 44.14 per cent of the targeted collection for that fiscal. 

In real terms, Punjab’s non-tax revenue collected till October (audited figures of key fiscal indicators) is Rs 2,805.39 crore. Since the target for the tax collection in the last fiscal was low, the non-tax revenue collected in the corresponding period in the last financial year was Rs 1,423.34 crore though it was over 44.14 per cent of the Budget estimates. 

Talking to The Tribune, Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal admitted that the non-tax revenue collection was below the projections as well as his expectations. “Some of the departments have not hiked the user charges for the past 15 years. Not only are the collections low, but many departments are also using the money collected themselves without routing it through the consolidated fund of the state. I have given a pep talk to various departments and have discussed the problem with my colleagues heading these departments. Hopefully, the collection will improve in the third and fourth quarter,” he said. 

Even the tax revenue of the state is lower this year than the tax collected (of the total estimated collection) in 2017-18. Figures available with The Tribune show that the tax collected is 40.21 per cent of the Budget estimates (Rs 21,511.55 crore) as compared to 43.58 per cent of total budget realisation in the corresponding period of 2017-18 (Rs 21,867.36 crore). This is mainly on account of slow excise duty collection (only 44 per cent of estimates have been collected this year as compared to 55.85 per cent collected in the same period last year).