Optimistic revenue targets drive Dhindsa’s high-on-doles budget

Though Dhindsa said the revenue deficit will be drastically brought down to Rs 1,747 crore — it overshot to Rs 4,758 crore this year against target of Rs 3123 crore — he did not put any figure to additional resource mobilisation (ARM) measures. The ARMs were pegged at Rs 3,000 crore when the state met the Planning Commission for the 2012-13 budget. However,Dhindsa presented a tax-free budget in June last year factoring Rs 2,000 crore as ARMs. The new taxes and levies were imposed later in August and have fetched the state just Rs 1,000 crore in 2012-13.

Dhindsa admitted that the Rs 16,123 crore annual plan would require additional resources and the state government plans to generate this by cutting down the unproductive expenditure,adopting other austerity methods,better tax administration and tax compliance.

His second budget yet again betted on optimistic projections on revenue receipts and cutting down unproductive expenditure,the latter not qualified in figures. He said the VAT collection was at Rs 5,136 crore in 2007 and rose to Rs 14,900 crore in 2012-13 and is likely to increase to Rs 20,000 crore in 2013-14. He said state’s excise revenue is likely to grow to Rs 3,800 crore Patting the government’s back on several occasions during his budget speech,he said the state achieved an economic growth of 6.73 per cent,which,he added,exceeded the target of 5.9 per cent in the 11th plan.

“The national economy grew at 5 per cent in 2012-13. The per capita income increased at the rate of 13.68 per cent in 2012-13 against national growth rate of 11.67 per cent. The debt to GDP ratio was brought down from 44.04 per cent during the 10th plan (2002-07) to 32.11 per cent during the 11th plan period (2007-12) against the total outstanding debt of the Centre which is 49.80 per cent of GDP at the end of March 2012,” he added.

Aided by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal while answering queries of mediapersons,Dhindsa chose to let Sukhbir’s political statements dictate the reasons for his unusual feat of presenting a low-deficit budget with more doles and schemes.