Meghalaya CM chairs first pre-budget consultation, says state’s own tax revenue doubled in span of six years

Syllad | The Rising MeghalayaFebruary 12, 2025

Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma on Wednesday said the state’s own tax revenue has doubled in a span of six years.

Chairing the first-of-its-kind live session on Pre-Budget Consultation for FY 2025-26 at the conference hall of the secretariat, Sangma said the state’s own tax revenue has increased from Rs 1450 crore in 2018 to Rs 3217 crore today.

“These are the actual numbers going from Rs 1450 crore to Rs 3217 crore in a matter of six years. We have doubled our tax collection of our own revenue receipts. These are AG figures,” he added.

The CM also informed that the excise revenue has also increased from Rs 199 crore to Rs 458 crore in a matter of six years and announced that the revenue is expected to cross Rs 520 crore this year.

“The increase in excise has gone up from Rs 199 crore to Rs 458 crore. I just had a review meeting. We are expecting to cross Rs 520 crore this year itself.”

He added, “I think the number here proves that from Rs 199 crore to Rs 500 crore reflects the commitment of this government to plug the loopholes that are there and numbers are showing that our efforts are yielding results where our excise revenue has almost tripled in the last six years. Is there room for improvement? Absolutely there is. This is a reflection of our policies and commitments that this government is showing.”

Responding to a question from one of the stakeholders, Sangma said, “We will explore that option but I will tell you the main player for ensuring that we are able to minimize the leakages is actually technology. So we have to implement technology in a correct manner to monitor every movement that comes and every sale that takes place. We have removed the layers of collections, we have centralized the collection process so that there is not many layers of collection taking place but whether the state government runs it or bond or whoever runs it the chance of leakage can always be there if we don’t have proper monitoring and proper technology to implement and monitor every single movement that is taking place.”

Further, the CM said that a lot of budgets is being put in for schools and higher & technical education.

“The expenditure has gone up from Rs 1085 crore to Rs 2338 crore today. We have seen a 14 % jump in education and for the first time actually we are implementing a lot of the actual infrastructural improvement.”

He informed that in the last four years, almost 2500 schools have received a new building or have been renovated.  “The infrastructure for LP, UP, secondary and higher secondary colleges and all government school infrastructures have got a huge push and huge investments have been made by the government to ensure proper infrastructure and upgradation is there,” Sangma said.

“We have gone to a large number of people’s colleges. We have almost 23 Peoples Colleges today again this is targeting strengthening higher education in our state. We have come up with our own state university and we are now earlier which is meant to be only a technical university and is now a full-fledged university due to the CUET issue and now it is for the colleges to affiliate to the university so that they can bypass the CUET exams,” the CM said while informing that the government is also sanctioning the manpower for the engineering college, the architectural college, science college, commerce college, model college, infrastructures of which have been completed.

“We will be having close to 8-9 new government colleges in different disciplines being activated this year itself,” he further added.

Furthermore, the CM announced that the Shillong Medical College will be made operational from this year and said, “The SMC will start from September-October 2025 and this will be a very big milestone for us.”

On the status of the Tura Medical College, Sangma however said, “We are also working towards activating the Tura medical college but we have more challenges there because of manpower mostly because doctors, professors, associate and assistant professors are not available in Tura MC so we have to make that possible – so all these areas are being looked at.”

“We are pushing for private investments in higher & technical education and hope that in a month’s time or two months’ time we may have more good news and more private high quality universities are also coming up. These are the kinds of steps that are being taken,” he added.

Stating that education is one of the most trickiest and one of the most difficult sectors in the state, the CM said, “It requires a lot of efforts to untie the knots that have been created in the education department, I am not blaming anybody but through the years a lot of complications come up and slowly steadily and surgically we will have to untangle these knots while balancing the overall system and looking at finances in it. Hopefully it will improve and a lot is being planned and a lot of budget is being put in for schools and higher & technical education.”