Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah today stressed the need to improve resource utilisation and generation to give a push to the development activities in the state.
"While the state is thankful for the financial assistance provided by the Union Government for the development purpose, yet there is need that the state catapults its own resource generation to give fillip to the developmental activities," Omar said at a function here.
"The gap between the resources and expenditure puts greater hurdle to take up the development projects in hand and complete them in a fixed time frame," he added.
Omar expressed hope that state Finance Minister Abdul Rahim Rather, also the Chairman of Empowered Committee of State Finance Ministers of India, will use his office to get additional share of funds from the Centre.
Mentioning the operationalisation of toll plaza at Lakhenpur, he said, it has provided greater facilities to the traders in the transaction of their business in a hassle-free manner. It has also helped to check leakages in tax collections, he said.
He inaugurated the building complex of Excise and Commercial Taxes (ECT) at Solina on Srinagar-Airport road and expressed hope that the complex will be a reflection of growth towards revenue generation in the state.
The Finance Department has a plan to construct the Second Phase of Excise and Taxation Complex on the adjacent land to house Sales Tax Tribunal and Commissioner of Stamps, which are presently accommodated in the main complex.
In his speech, Finance Minister Rather detailed the growth of the state and presented measures taken to bring in transparency in tax collection and rationalising the system.
He also expressed hope that the new complex will boost the functioning of the department and help in managing tax affairs in a better atmosphere as also facilitating the tax payers in a big way.
