Our Correspondent
Kohima | March 17
Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang today said that as an “austerity measure”, the Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and senior officers have voluntarily decided to forego the allowances of refreshments, newspapers and magazines. Presenting the Nagaland budget for the year 2016-17 here today in the state assembly session, the chief minister said the government also intended to bring down the overhead expenditures with other measures such as departments having excess employees shall not be allowed to recruit new employees even against resultant vacancies as was done in the case of school education department and rationalization of man power management, and relocation of employees from departments that have surplus to departments that require more manpower.
He said the government spends about Rs. 85 crores annually for payment of leave encashment to retired employees. It is observed that most of the retired employees get full benefits of 300 days of leave encashment although many may not be regular in their duties. This has a huge financial impact on the state government, he said adding that the government will, therefore, be examining the possibilities of either reducing the entitled number of days for leave encashment, or the option of allowing retiring employees to avail the entitled leave before retirement.
About 50% of NPB spent as salary
Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang today said the state government spends about 50.15 % as salary for the government employees and about 18.15% for pensions out of Non- Plan Budget (NPB).
In his budget presentation for 2016-17, he said the ratio of government employees to the population is about 1:15 which is perhaps the highest in the country.
Referring to resource mobilization, he said “We are making continuous efforts to increase our tax base and improve efficiency of the collection machinery,” adding that it has recently put in place a system of fixing the base rate of land under Dimapur so that mis-declaration and undervaluation of land transactions with the intent of evading stamp duty are checked.
He expressed belief that it was a good time for the state government to tone up tax administration in the state, and to closely examine the collection and deposits of various tax and non-tax revenue by the different agencies of the state government.
“We will accordingly focus on special audit of revenue collecting departments during the coming financial year to ascertain correct deduction and deposit of various taxes such as VAT, forest royalty, works tax, royalty on coal, power tarrif etc. and take steps to recover those that are due to be deposited into government account,” he said. Further, he said the government also envisages introducing more efficient methods of revenue collections so as to plug leakages in the system.
Later, addressing a press conference after the budget presentation, the Chief Minister said that he wishes to maximize the over-all development of the state but at the same time maintain strict financial management. He also maintained that for the first time, the accumulated deficit has been brought down through internal management which is a commendable achievement.
He also expressed his gratitude to the 14th Finance Commission for awarding reasonable funds to the state, particularly with respect to the grants made to cover the revenue gap.
The Chief Minister also stated that no new taxes will be imposed for the current Financial year, however the tax collection system in the state will be improved.
2016-17 declared as “Year of Construction Workers”
Chief Minister T.R. Zeliang today said the state government has decided to declare the year 2016-17 as “Year of Construction Workers.”
Stating this in his budget presentation here today, he said this declaration was made in order to address the problem of lack of relevant skills and employability with focus on encouraging youths to take up construction work as a profession, and build their skills through appropriate institutions to be put in place shortly.
Presently, he said, there are 72,415 unemployed youth in the Live Register in the state, many of whom are engineers, architects and diploma holders.
The huge construction activity in the state where the presence of our youth is practically non-existent, which is unfortunate given the high levels of unemployment, he said.
“The overwhelming dependence on migrant construction workers also leads to a huge outflow of financial resources from the state, which adversely affects our economy. There is also the ever present danger of such floating population on the demography of the state,” he said.
