Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh, who also holds the Finance portfolio, proposed a total expenditure of Rs 21,224 crore for the year 2020-21 in the Assembly on February 14.
Out of the total expenditure, an amount of Rs 2,066 crore is charged expenditure and the remaining amount of Rs 19,159 crore is voted expenditure.
“The total receipts are estimated at Rs 20,146 crore. The revenue receipts are estimated at Rs 18,083 crore and capital receipts at Rs 2,063 crore. Total estimates of state’s own tax and non-tax receipts in the BE 2020-21 are Rs 1,325 crore and Rs 257 crore respectively. Receipt from the state’s share in Central Taxes & Duties is estimated at Rs 5,630 crore in BE 2020-21. This is an increase of 39% over RE 2019-20 estimates,” the chief minister said.
The budget is not a ‘magic pill’ that can solve all problems and there are issues which are addressed through the budget to bring about real and holistic development, he added.
“The government’s policies are people-oriented and decisions are based on feedback from the people. This is evident from the decisions and actions of the past three years of the government. Various initiatives taken, including ‘Go to Hills’, ‘Go to Village’, ‘Meeyamgi Numit’, ‘Hills Leaders Day’ and various schemes launched, including Chief Minister’s Hakshelgi Tengbang (CMHT), Chief Minister’s Shotharabashingi Tengbang (CMST), Start-Up Manipur and Stand-Up Manipur, are ample examples of the dedication of this government to meet the needs and aspirations of the people of the state,” Singh said.
Last year, the government presented a deficit budget of Rs 1,405 crore for the year 2019-20. “Efforts of our government in 2019-20 was therefore directed towards exploring all possible avenues of additional resource mobilization and to cut down the unwanted expenditure, while meeting the developmental needs of the state,” he added.
Measures to bring more traders under GST regime and strict enforcement have resulted in improvement of GST collection. These measures had a tremendous impact on our SGST collection, thereby increasing the collection from Rs 301 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 695 crore in 2018-19. For 2019-20, the government expects to achieve revised target of Rs 862 crore, the house was informed.
In order to improve our revenue collection through excise duties, the government changed the structure of excise duty. Instead of having a fixed duty structure for different kinds of liquor, there is a graded structure in place for liquor issued to exempted categories in Manipur. As a result, a person consuming a premium quality liquor will have to pay higher duty. At the same time, license and renewal fees have also been doubled. All these measures are expected to increase annual revenue to Rs. 14 crore from the previous annual revenue of Rs 8 crore, CM said.
A separate ‘Development Corpus’ has been created with an allocation of Rs 130 crore in BE 2020-21. This corpus fund will be used to fund special projects which can bring real and tangible benefits to the state.
