Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday said his government would follow strict fiscal discipline as part of efforts to strengthen the state’s economy, which is recovering from the impact of COVID-19.
Replying to a debate in the Vidhan Sabha on the demand for budgetary grants for various departments, the Chief Minister said the government was required to strictly observe fiscal discipline to take welfare measures and make allocations for the proposed wage revision of government employees. resources were available. He said that the government will adopt prudent measures to increase tax collection and reduce unnecessary expenditure.
In fact, the government had already adopted fiscal discipline, saying it had projected borrowings to the tune of Rs 63,100 crore in the 2022-23 budget, though it was within the norms to raise them to Rs 67,100 crore.
With this, the total debt burden of the state stood at ₹5,18,366 crore, which was 27.49% of the GSDP, he pointed out.
Referring to other measures related to fiscal discipline, he said the fiscal deficit has been reduced to Rs 6,500 crore from the estimated Rs 15,519 crore in 2021-22 by increasing the collection of taxes and revenue receipts. He said that this has been possible through adopting innovative methods and bringing efficiency in the system.
Pointing out that the state has managed to increase tax collections beyond the target in the last six months of 2021-22, the first six months saw a decline in collections due to the impact of COVID-19, the chief minister said. The focus will be to increase the tax collection from the first month itself in 2022-23.
Describing the tax collection targets for 2022-23 as “realistic”, Mr Bommai expressed confidence that it would be possible to exceed the target if the tax collection efficiency remained the same as last year.
Pointing out that non-tax revenue of ₹6,000 crore was collected in 2021-22 against the target of ₹4,000 crore, he said he wanted to increase this collection to ₹10,000 crore in 2022-23.