THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: At a time when a cash-strapped state is trying to scrape money from as many sources as possible, the finance department is drawing up a plan to pull in over Rs 10,000 crore as non-tax revenue over a period of three to five years by way of “commercially re-employing” thousands of hectares of idle or unproductive government land. According to Land Bank estimates, the state has over 75,000 hectares of uneconomical land.
Such lands fall into three categories: lands given on long leases for a measly rent, swathes left unused within the boundaries of large public sector companies and industrial parks, and old crumbling government structures that could be razed down for high-rise commercial complexes. “We have innumerable pockets of land in the prime areas of the capital city alone, which were given out for 50-60- year leases at low annual rent that was not even collected,” said Jose Sebastian of Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation.
For instance, arrears amounting to '64 crore have not been collected from the Golf Club alone. “The short levy happens mainly because the government has refused to revise fair values,” a top department official said. The latest CAG audit of 1,028 entities in seven districts had revealed that the state had lost Rs 1,078 crore as a consequence of its inability to view land as a revenue-generating option. “There exists no system for timely renewal of leases, revision of lease rent and for the realisation of lease rent arrears,” the report had noted.
Like PSUs, new-age industrial parks too have been unable to utilise the land at their disposal. The government, for instance, is yet to make use of about 180.57 acres of land acquired at exorbitant rates to set up industrial units at different IT parks. The official said that if private companies are allowed to build huge complexes in idle lands and shift government offices to a part of these complexes, the government can save both capital and revenue expenditure.
