Lucknow, Apr 7 (UNI) Despite being one of the few states that have not implemented Value Added Tax (VAT) regime, Uttar Pradesh has created a history of sorts by clocking a 28 per cent growth in trade tax collections during 2005-06.

Gujarat, Punjab, Chattisgarh and Orissa were among significant tax collector states, but lagged behind UP in trade tax collection increase, over the previous years level.

State Trade Tax Commissioner Rajneesh Gupta told mediapersons here today that against the revised target of Rs 11,500 crore, the department has collected Rs 11,796.49 crores as trade tax which was over Rs 2570.13 crore more than collections for 2004-05.

Claiming that UP is the only state in the country to achieve a exponential growth of 28 per cent in the trade tax collections, Mr Gupta said that in Gujarat and Chattisgarh the collection growth was around 27 per cent while in Punjab it was pegged at 24 per cent and in Orissa 23 per cent.

In other states the average tax collections increase was between seven to 18 per cent with Bihar striking the lowest four per cent increase.

The TT commissioner said that the increase in the Oil sector was 29.76 per cent while in the non-oil segment it was 26.8 per cent. In the oil sector, the state government collected Rs 4,327 crore as trade tax and in the non-oil sector it was Rs 7,480 crore.

The government has also netted a revenue of Rs 400 crore on entry tax on 14 items while Rs 415 crore was collected by way of development tax.

Talking about other achievements of the department, Mr Gupta said that 32 family of the traders had been provided Rs 4 lakh each as compensation on the death of their heads under the trader insurance scheme. An amount of Rs 218.36 crore was collected during mobile squad raids.

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