Finance and Commercial Taxes Minister Jayant Malaiya while addressing the pre-budget meeting chaired by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in New Delhi on Friday said that attention should be paid to the recommendations of the Raghuram Rajan Committee report for the allotment of Central funds. States must be given maximum Central assistance to facilitate them in achieving targets. Delay in release of Central funds should be done away with. He also said that the share of the Centre should be released in advance and relaxation should also be given in the limit for fiscal deficit on the basis of some basic economic indicators.
Union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha was also present.Malaiya said that works costing Rs2,800 crore have been taken up for Simhastha-2016 to be held at Ujjain. He urged the Centre to make available adequate funds for this. He also urged the Centre to cooperate in Rs26,000 crore river linking project for irrigating 6 lakh hectare agriculture lands.Raising the issue of compensation of CST, the Minister pointed out that no funds have been received by the State since 2010-11. If the State is provided pending CST amount of Rs568 crore, it will be very helpful for Madhya Pradesh.
Referring to the ban on poppy, Malaiya said that Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh are opium-producing States. Opium is used in the manufacture of pain killing medicines, pain-killers for cancer patients and in Ayurvedic medicines. Farming of opium grains and poppy are important by-products which give extra annual income of crores of rupees to farmers and the State earns Rs 115 crore through licences. Production and sale of opium poppy is being banned from March 31, 2015. This will affect over 25,000 farmers in the State apart from causing Rs115 crore loss to the State exchequer.
Malaiya urged the Centre to release full amount of special package for year 2013-14 to Madhya Pradesh under the National Disaster Relief Fund. Describing cooperation between tax regimes in fight against black money as significant, he advocated for 360 degree data coordination. Malaiya also laid emphasis on rationalization of Stamp Duty Act and GST.
Referring to socio-economic impact of e-Commerce, Jayant Malaiya threw light on solution to taxation issues under e-Commerce. He said that taxation system needs to be dynamic in proportion of dynamism of world of e-Commerce. Principal Secretary, Commercial Taxes, Manoj Shrivastava, and Secretary, Finance, Manish Rastogi, of Madhya Pradesh, also attended the meeting.