M’rashtra scraps octroi in 15 municipal areas

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Mumbai, Mar 19: Presenting a revenue surplus budget of Rs 964 crore for 2008-09, the Maharashtra government on Wednesday proposed abolition of Octroi Duty in 15 “D” class municipal corporations by replacing account based cess. The annual Octroi Duty collection of these civic bodies are over Rs 1,100 crore.

The state government has assured to compensate revenue loss due to the shifting to account base cess from the Octroi Duty regime. State finance minister Jayant Patil made this announcement in his annual budget in the state legislature. There are in all 22 municipal corporations in the state with the annual Octroi Duty collection of Rs 6,500 crore. Mumbai civic body tops the list with the Octroi Duty collection of over Rs 3,500 crore.

Patil has not touched seven municipal corporations including Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Navi Mumbai and Thane. However, the 15 D class civic bodies covered are Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi, Mira Bhayander, Malegaon, Kalyan-Dombivli, Sangli, Kolhapur, Sholapur, Akola, Nanded, Amravati, Jalgaon and Dhule.

Patil’s announcement comes after the state chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh had announced on January 11 that the government was in the midst of abolition of Octroi Duty as per the recommendations made by several committees.

As reported by FE, Deshmukh had quoted that account based cess was one of the options being considered by the state government to replace Octroi Duty. The account based cess is currently levied in the Navi Mumbai.