State has no scope to increase tax: Sudhir Mungantiwar

Mumbai: The state government does not have scope to increase the revenue, resources and taxes in the budget. Finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar, talking to The Asian Age, said the government has no option but to take loans to complete projects in its present critical financial condition. “So, I will table a realistic budget,” Mr Mungantiwar said.

The budget session of the state legislature started on Monday and Mr Mungantiwar will present the budget for the next financial year on March 9. While talking about the current financial situation, fiscal space, revenue sources, loan position and whether the budget would be an ‘election budget’, the minister threw light on the present financial scenario.

Mr Mungantiwar said, “After the (implementation of the) GST (goods and services tax) regime, the state government doesn’t have much space to increase revenue, resources and taxes greatly. We have first ranking in GST collection in the country, so we may not need compensation from the Union government next year.

Our revenue is increasing, but now we can’t raise taxes on petroleum products, liquor and other items because those are at the optimum level. Land revenue will not increase much. “Now we have to complete ongoing projects so there is no option other than taking loans.

As per the Reserve Bank of India guidelines, we can raise the loans up to 22.7 per cent of the GDP and we are up to 16.3 per cent at present. In the earlier government’s regime, it was 17.5 per cent. So the situation is under control. But the loan bur den has reached more than Rs 4 lakh crore today and it will increase. The state  has to pay Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 crore for the interest on loans and Rs 25,000 to 27,000 crore for pensions. We have to give pay commission-recommended salaries to employees,” Mr Mungantiwar added.