AP likely to miss revenue target, Rs 1,000cr shortfall seen

The state's revenues in the current financial year are expected to register an extremely low growth rate of around six per cent as against a target of 18 per cent. The short fall in revenues is pegged around Rs 1,000 crore at present.

Interestingly, the low growth forecast comes at a time when the collection of central taxes in the state may record a 20 per cent growth.

The causes for the dichotomy in performance of the state and central revenue receipts in AP may be of academic interest but the fall in growth of state revenues compared to even the drought-hit years is abnormal.

With the state's financial position strained by additional expenditure, the deficit in collections has been seriously affecting budgetary allocations in the fourth quarter.

The cumulative growth rate of state revenues for the current fiscal up to January 2004, has registered a mere 6 per cent while it was 12.6 per cent and 11.3 per cent for the corresponding periods of 2001-02 and 2002-03.

With the commercial taxes and excise collections continuing to lag way behind the annual targets, the gap between targets and actual realisation has been around Rs 1,000 crore.

Against the target of Rs 12,352 crore collections upto January 2004, the achievement was only about Rs 11,120 crore. The total target set by all the revenue earning departments for the current year is Rs 15,199 crore.

The finance department has projected Rs 14,163 crore collections for the entire financial year, which is 93.2 per cent of the actual target.

The central taxes, which include income tax, corporate tax, customs and central excise, have shown a 20.3 per cent growth rate upto January-end, compared to a 15.6 per cent growth in the corresponding period of 2002-03.

On the commercial taxes front, as against the target of Rs 7,738 crore upto January(annual target Rs 9,741 crore), about Rs 7,156 crore were realised, registering a gap of around Rs 600 crore.

The excise revenue, which is the second largest in terms of contribution to the state exchequer, has for the first time in the recent past shown a consistent negative growth in the current financial year.

Against a target of 1,775.79 crore upto January, the achievement was Rs 1457.01 crore compared to Rs 1,494 crore achieved during the same period in 2002-03, registering a negative growth of 2.5 per cent.