Agartala: A full-fledged team of the XIV Finance Commission headed by it’s Chairman YP Reddy is arriving here on November 12 next to assess the state’s committed expenditure for five years starting from 2014-15 FY.
During the three-day visit, the FC team is scheduled to hold meeting with the state government officials to assess the state’s non-plan expenditure.
After the official level meeting, the FC team would hold meeting with Chief Minister Manik Sarkar, Finance Minister Badal Chowdhury and other Ministers.
In view of the FC’s visit, the Finance department has fully geared up to prepare a memorandum to be presented before the Chairman of the FC.
Talking to media at Civil Secretariat here on Thursday, the Finance Minister said, “The memorandum is on the process of preparation which will project the state’s non-plan expenditure for five years”.
On being about the state’s expectation, Chowdhury indicated that the state government would certainly demand to provide money so that the employees could get salary and pension at par with the Central government employees.
Chowdhury further said the state has been facing tough time during the period of 13th Finance Commission because of faulty assessment by it. “Earlier, the FC used to fix the last year’s non plan expenditure of the state as base year while assessing the expenditure. But the 13th FC had fixed the non-plan expenditure calculating first year of the 12th FC period that resulted in massive loss for the state”, he said. Lashing out at the Centre for allocating less amount during the period of 13th FC, Chowdhury said, “It was a politically ploy to teach a lesson to the Marxist rule state which defies the reforms pushed by the Centre”.
Meanwhile, the meeting of empowered committee to push the Goods Services Tax (GST) regime from VAT era has been remained inconclusive due to strong resistance from the Finance Ministers of state governments.
“The state governments want adequate compensation from the Centre if it is determined to push the constitutional amendment for switching over to GST regime from VAT era”, Chowdhury who attended the empowered committee meeting in held, added.