Bhubaneswar: In a bid to scale up its revenue base, the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), Friday, said that it would be collecting trade licence fees from all business units functioning within its jurisdiction.
It is presumed that at present more than 50,000 business units are functioning within the BMC limits. However, only about 13,000 business units under the civic authority’s jurisdiction have obtained trade licences, leaving a majority of business establishments out of the trade licence ambit. This results in heavy revenue loss to public exchequer.
“We intend to hire the services of private agencies to carry out door-to-door survey of all the business units in order to assess the availability of trade licence with the business units and gather information on the business units lacking the same.
The hiring of a private agency is in tender stage and an agency shall be finalised within 20 days to conduct such survey,” BMC Commissioner Prem Chandra Chaudhary said.
The BMC, under the provision of Section 554 and section 617 of Orissa Municipal Corporation Act 2003, issues licences and permissions to carry out business under its jurisdiction. The licence and permission is issued after payment of due licence fee as per Dangerous and Offensive Trade Regulation 2006 of BMC.
Furthermore, after the above said information is collected, the BMC shall approach all the business units through the SHGs engaged for the collection of trade licence and holding tax. The application procedure has been eased to a greater extent by introduction of online mechanism. Interested parties can log in to www.bhubaneswar.me for new application and renewal of trade licence.
The move came after the civic body initiated Digital Door Numbering system for mapping of all properties within the BMC area on GIS platform.
