Haryana to present budget on March 7

Industry chambers in Haryana want the finance minister to rationalise taxes in the budget for 2008-09. Haryana Finance Minister Birender Singh is likely to present the budget on March 7.

Haryana is the pioneer in introducing the value-added tax (VAT) in India in 2004. Under VAT, the central sales tax was to be slashed every year by one percentage point.

Since other states lagged behind, the reduction of the central sales tax became effective after two years. So the traders and industrialists want the exemption limit of the Sales Tax Form 38 to be raised from Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000 to equalise the effect of CST.

Members of the Haryana Chamber of Commerce and Industry told Business Standard that the procedure of VAT refund needed to be streamlined because during scrutiny by the department concerned, it was often learnt that the VAT was not deposited in time by the sellers. This laxity, according to them, causes harassment to the buyers for the VAT refund.

Tractor units of Haryana, too, want support from the state government. According to a tractor ancillary owner, the state used to manufacture 60 per cent of the total tractors produced in India ten years ago. Over the years, Haryana's market share has dwindled to only 25 per cent.

Industry in Haryana also wants a synergy between the vocational institutes (ITIs and polytechnics) and the corporate and manufacturing sectors to provide the suitable manpower to the industry.

"We have to train the manpower at our own cost despite their qualification in professional courses. The state took some initiatives two years back but that remained confined to the NCR area while the rest of the units in Haryana do not get the desired manpower," said one of the representative.

With severe power crunch in the state, Haryana should invite only those units who can arrange power on their own so that the existing units that are already grappling with the power shortage do not get taxed further, they said.

The representatives of industry also proposed the finance minister to allow independent feeders to the industry clusters with the load of more than 1 Mw to procure power on their own.