SHIMLA: Himachal Pradesh chief minister Jai Ram Thakur on Wednesday said that the state has registered 38 per cent growth for January 2021 in revenue receipts vis-a-vis those of January last year.
He said that total revenue receipts during January 2021 are Rs 779 crore against Rs 562 crore during the same period of last year.
He said that the positive trend of revenue growth for the last five months seems to continue indicating an increase in economic activities in the state.
Jai Ram Thakur said that revenue receipts of the department grew at 15 per cent in August 2020, 10 per cent in September 2020, 37 per cent in October 2020, nine per cent in November 2020 and 24 per cent in December 2020.
He said that a significant increase of 119 per cent in revenue receipts of VAT, 32 per cent in revenue receipts of excise and 19 per cent in revenue receipts of the state GST have been registered in January 2021.
He said the significant increase in revenue receipts is due to disposal of cases under Legacy Cases Resolution Scheme (LCRS) revival of economic activities, government's unlock strategy, better compliance by taxpayers and better administration by the department.
Despite Covid-19 effect, the gap between cumulative revenue of current financial year and previous financial year is down to three per cent in January 2021 from 39 per cent in July 2020, he said.
Thakur said that new initiatives of monitoring of field units through performance cards and other IT based measures have created a healthy competitive work environment across the field authorities where each authority drives motivation to make strenuous efforts to beat the assigned targets.
This has contributed significantly in augmentation of state revenue receipts. The efforts of the field units have further been strengthened with the enhanced analytical and data driven intelligence-based capabilities at headquarter level.
Principal Secretary (Excise and Taxation) Jagdish Chander Sharma said that major focus areas have been identified for augmenting the state revenue receipts like recoveries under legacy cases resolution scheme, physical verifications of e-way bills, compliance of GST R3B return fillings, recovery of interest for late filing of returns, recovery of ineligible Input Tax Credit (ITCs) and recovery of tax deficits/mismatches etc.
He said that special focus has been laid on identification of cases pertaining to tax evasions and erroneous refunds to plug revenue leakages so as to augment the state revenues.