Chandigarh, May 27
In what may bring relief to the Aam Aadmi Party government, as it struggles to improve cash reserves for implementing its poll promises, the state’s earnings in the first month of their tenure in office (April) has seen an increase of 10 per cent, over the corresponding period of last year.
The state’s revenue receipts have increased from Rs 5,004.79 crore in April 2021 to Rs 5,530.43 crore in April 2022.
What has led to this hike is mainly the massive surge in non-tax revenues of the state. This revenue has seen a surge of over 200 per cent, with Punjab earning Rs 623.41 crore, as compared to just Rs 195.04 crore earned last April. This is the revenue earned as fee/user charges collected for services provided by Revenue, Health, Education, Transport, Tourism and Power departments, amongst others. For the past several years, the previous Akali-BJP and Congress governments had been trying to increase the non-tax revenue without much success. This revenue head has been falling much short of the Budget target for several years.
The state’s tax revenue — GST, excise collections, state’s share in Union taxes and other taxes and duties — has also increased by 9.86 per cent, from Rs 3,755.22 crore in April last year to Rs 4,125.70 crore in April this year.
On the other hand, in the first month of this government, the expenditure on the revenue account has increased by over 48 per cent, mainly because of a higher salary bill (increase of 29.7 per cent since April 2021); pensions (these have nearly doubled); and also because this April, the state government released Rs 965.19 crore as subsidy to the PSPCL. Last year, in April, no power subsidy was released. As a result, the state was in revenue surplus of Rs 1,009 crore last April. — TNS
10% jump in April revenue on back of 3-fold rise in non-tax income
{$excerpt:n}
