Chief Minister V. Narayanasamy, who is going to present the full-fledged budget for the fiscal 2016-17 reached out to various sections, particularly traders, to get their feedback on various aspects of fiscal management of the Union Territory.
Accompanied by Revenue Minister M.O.H.F. Shahjahan, MLAs K. Lakshminarayanan, R. Siva and officials from the Commercial Taxes department, Mr. Narayanasamy visited every shop, including jewellery outlets, electrical, electronic and textile showrooms on the Jawaharlal Nehru Street and listened to the grievances of traders.
The Chief Minister also requested the traders to promptly pay taxes and enquired about their problems. Talking to reporters, Mr. Narayanasamy said providing security to traders was the top priority of his Government.
“Traders were facing threats quite often in the past and I have asked the police department to ensure that neither the trading community nor the public faces any insecurity”, he said.
Tax structure
“We will study the possibility of keeping the tax structure at a low level so that business will expand and ultimately result in increase in revenue to the Union Territory,” he said.
The government would also ensure that buyers from neighbouring districts of Tamil Nadu purchased their commodities from Puducherry, which was the practice in the past. The government would take all efforts to restore this practice which had changed following the imposition of Value Added Tax in the larger interest of enhancing the revenue.
Shopping festival
Mr. Narayanasamy said that the month-long shopping festival, introduced during the Congress regime, was suspended by the previous AINRC Government.
The festival would be revived this year. The government would look into certain concessions for electronics goods and readymade garments, he said.
