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| Non-Commissioning of industrial estates leads to wasteful expenditure of more than Rs 50 crores | | Industries Deptt fails to retrieve land from more than 1300 defaulters | | Jehangir Rashid
SRINAGAR, Oct 15: Department of Industries and Commerce has been hogged by various ills over the past many years and as such the basic objective of the creation of this department has taken a hit. This has resulted in under growth of industrial sector in Jammu & Kashmir.
In its report for year ending March 31, 2012, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has said that due to unplanned execution and consequent non-completion/non-commissioning of five industrial estates by the department, an expenditure of Rs. 56.65 crores remained unproductive. Further, due to non-acquisition of land for Industrial Growth Centre, Samba, Rs. 36.61 crores advanced to the collectors remained locked up, the report said.
"An amount of Rs. 24.74 crores realized as revenue on account of rent premium of the plots of land was mis-utilized towards payment of salary, wages etc. of the employees by SIDCO and SICOP. Non observance of guidelines/instructions governing packages of incentives for the industrial entrepreneurs resulted in inadmissible and irregular payment of subsidies to the extent of Rs. 12.80 crores, inadmissible VAT reimbursement of Rs. 26.77 crores and irregular exemption from payment of toll tax of Rs. 5.58 crores," said the CAG report.
The CAG report said that training centres of the department (Handicraft sector) were under-utilized as only 53 percent entrepreneurs were trained in these centres during 2007-08 to 2011-12. It added that the purpose of imparting training to unemployed for generating employment through formation of cooperative societies was not achieved as only meagre number of cooperative societies was formed for organizing the trainees. "The department had not taken any action to retrieve the land from 1329 entrepreneurs who had not established their industrial units after the allotment of plots of land in their favour. There was a shortfall of 29 percent manpower in the department. The shortage of technical staff like Project Managers and Functional Managers was to the extent of 93 percent," said the CAG report.
The CAG report said that the department had not conducted any industrial survey for assessing the industrial potential including availability of human resources, raw materials and marketing avenues. It added that the department had no mechanism in place to check the quantities of minerals extracted and lifted by the lessees from the mineral sites.
"The performance of the new industrial units set up under incentive packages announced by the Central Government in 2002 and the state government in 2004 was not commensurate with the burden of fiscal concessions and subsidies borne by the Central/State exchequer which ranged between Rs. 1289.89 crores to Rs. 2475.88 crores during the years 2007-08 to 2011-12," said the CAG report.
The CAG report said the manufacturing output of the beneficiary units has been low in absolute terms and almost entirely matching the pay-roll cost, indicating prevalence of low-tech manufacturing with low value addition. It added that the contribution of beneficiary units to state's Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) was clearly less than the fiscal burden of benefits provided to them.
The CAG report said that there is no mechanism in place to monitor the turnover, value of output, profitability, extent and quality of employment generation, actual new investment brought in and extent of value addition in the manufacturing by the units so as to see whether these are commensurate with the burden of tax concessions and subsidies on the public exchequer besides, facilitating balanced geographically well dispersed growth. |
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