RANCHI: Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Monday asked the top brass in the state bureaucracy to pull up their socks to speed up revenue collection and explore possibilities for new sources of additional revenue collection. This was CM Soren’s first-ever review meeting with the top officials of the state government after assuming charge in the State Secretariat on Monday.Notably, the state government needs a huge amount of additional funds during the current fiscal to fulfil its promises of Rs 2500 honorarium to every woman in the 18-50 age group, subsidised LPG cylinders and free power up to 200 units among others.In a high-level meeting with senior officials, including Principal Secretaries and Secretaries of different departments, he instructed officials to expedite revenue collection and identify new sources of additional revenue.The Chief Minister said that revenue management should be strengthened. “Along with this, steps should be taken to control the wastage of revenue and establishment expenditure,” he added.Soren also asked the officials to remove the flaws of the revenue generation system by doing micro-level observation. He said that all the departments should prepare an action plan for revenue collection.The directive came in the context of meeting the demands of newly launched schemes beyond the financial year 2024–25 budget and preparing for the supplementary budget for the same fiscal year.The chief minister said that many times due to lack of coordination between the departments, the pace of revenue collection slows down and revenue collection is not done according to the target. “In such a situation, to solve this problem, all the departments should coordinate among themselves and do the work of revenue collection. For this, the responsibility of the officers of various departments in the districts should be fixed,” Soren added.Soren pointed out that several agencies, boards, and corporations within various departments have untapped potential to generate significant revenue. He suggested restructuring these entities into business models to expand their operations and contribute additional income to the state.Further, Soren addressed the need to monitor funds spent under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives by industries and companies operating in the state.Soren also instructed the officials to establish a system for tracking CSR expenditures and recommended engaging with companies and industry groups to explore further revenue-enhancing opportunities.
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