Lucknow: The state government on Tuesday claimed a faster economic recovery, achieving nearly 71.8 per cent revenue against targets for 2020-2021 amid the fight against Covid-19 in Uttar Pradesh.
The state government’s recovery of tax revenue in 2020-2021 fell short only by 3.3 per cent against the previous year, earning a revenue of 1.23 lakh crore (2020-2021) against the revenue of ₹1.19 lakh crore in 2019-2020.
“Our revenue from taxes from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020 is only 3.3 per cent less than the amount recovered during the same period in 2019-2020,” said minister for finance Suresh Khanna while briefing media persons about the revenue recovery situation in the state in 2020-2021.
Khanna said the state government had also received additional amount of about ₹8000 crore from the centre. He said the state government was to get a sum of about ₹1.52 lakh crore from the centre, which later revised the figures to only ₹1.40 lakh crore and later reduced this amount further to ₹98,000 crore only. “The centre has, however, given ₹1.06 lakh crore now as the tax collection went up there,” said Khanna.
“This is in sync with the trends of increase in revenue observed since the lifting of lockdown in second quarter of 2020-2021. This is a good sign that the state government’s own revenue has been augmented by increase flow of resources from the centre. This also indicates that the state’s economic recovery is better than expected,” said Yashvir Tyagi, former professor, department of economics, Lucknow University.
{{/usCountry}}“This is in sync with the trends of increase in revenue observed since the lifting of lockdown in second quarter of 2020-2021. This is a good sign that the state government’s own revenue has been augmented by increase flow of resources from the centre. This also indicates that the state’s economic recovery is better than expected,” said Yashvir Tyagi, former professor, department of economics, Lucknow University.
{{/usCountry}}Khanna said the state government’s tax and non-tax recovery from March 1 to 31, 2021 had shown an increase of ₹3030.48 crore against the recovery in the same month in 2020. He said the state government collected a sum of ₹16,476.33 crore against ₹13,445.85 crore collected in March 2019. He said the collections under VAT and GST heads fell short of about ₹1095.74 crore with the state government getting revenue of ₹8769.15 crore against ₹9864.89 crore in 2019-2020. The GST and VAT collections remained 103 per cent of targets of ₹8471 crore. The state government’s recovery from excise was ₹2518.50 crore, 114.7 per cent of targets and it got ₹1247.06 crore from stamps and registration, 105.8 per cent of targets. The state government’s earning from transport was 154.33 crore, lower than the figures of 2019-2020 and 100.8 per cent of targets for 2020-2021.
It may be mentioned that the state government’s estimated expenditure on payment of salary and pension etc. remains about ₹13000 crore to ₹15000 crore per month. The state government may have to spend more under the head as the freeze on DA announced during lockdown may end in the coming months. The state government will have to take measures to augment its revenue to meet committed expenditure and provide more funds for development projects.