Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Tuesday said that his Government would adhere to strict fiscal discipline as part of efforts to strengthen the State economy, which is recovering from the impact of COVID-19.
Replying to a debate in the Legislative Assembly on demand for budgetary grants for various departments, the Chief Minister said strict adherence to fiscal discipline was a must for the Government to take up welfare measures and to make allocations for proposed pay revision of Government staff with whatever resources were available. The Government would adopt prudent measures to increase tax collection and reduce unnecessary expenditure, he said.
In fact, the Government had already adopted fiscal discipline, he said while pointing out that he had pegged the borrowings to ₹63,100 crore in the budget for 2022-23 though he was well within the norms to stretch them till ₹67,100 crore.
With this, the total loan burden of the State had stood at ₹5,18,366 crore which accounted for 27.49% of the GSDP, he pointed out.
Referring to other measures related to fiscal discipline, he said the fiscal deficit had been reduced from the estimated ₹15,519 crore in 2021-22 to a level of ₹6,500 crore by increasing the collection of taxes and revenue receipts. This was made possible through adoption of innovative methods and bringing in efficiency in the system, he said.
Pointing out that the State had managed to increase tax collection in the last six months of 2021-22 beyond the targets after the first six months saw a dip in collection due to the impact of COVID-19, the Chief Minister said his main focus in 2022-23 would be to increase tax collection from the first month itself.
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 like the previous year.
Pointing out that a non tax revenue of ₹6,000 crore had been collected in 2021-22 as against the target of ₹4,000 crore, he said he wanted to increase this collection to ₹10,000 crore in 2022-23.
