Essar Gp tops Sales Tax dues in Gujarat

Gandhinagar, Mar 10 (UNI) Essar Group leads the industrial sector with arrears of sales tax to Gujarat Goverment,Finance Minister Saurab Patel told the Assembly today during the question hour.

Mr Patel in his reply to a question of Mr Manish Gilitwala (Cong) said that the Essar Group owes a maximum of Rs 1,318.92 crore of sales tax followed by ONGC (Rs 224.59 cr), Reliance Industries (Rs 139.41 cr), L&T (Rs 22.91 cr) and Indian Oil (Rs 11.84 cr).

He informed that the State government has to recover outstanding Sales Tax arrears of Rs 1,717.67 crores till December last year from various industrial houses based in Hazira, near Surat.

To a supplementary, Mr Patel said none of these industrial houses have been given any waiver on their dues.

The minister also informed the House that government has to make the recovery of outstanding sales tax worth Rs 322.18 crore from various cement manufacturing companies of the State.

Among these cement companies, the highest recovery of sales tax of Rs 85.49 crore was from Gujarat Siddhi Cement followed by Rs 67.45 crore from Ultratech Cement, Rs 43.59 crore from H M P Cement, Rs 43.44 crore from Saurashtra Cement and Rs 22.87 crore from Balaram Cement, the minister said.

He said during 2004-05, the sales tax revenue was of Rs 8,370.40 crore against the target of Rs 8,002 crore.

While against target of Rs 9,100 crore of the current financial year, Rs 8,598.65 crore was recovered till January this year, Mr Patel added.

UNI MP KU KD AW1709