Traders say Covid-19 cess shows Nagaland government’s apathy to public misery

Dimapur, May 6 (EMN): The Confederation of Nagaland Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CNCCI) has alleged that the state government’s refusal to rollback the Covid-19 cess on diesel and petrol was an indication of the latter’s apathy towards public misery.

In a statement issued on Wednesday, the traders maintained that the state government’s “attitude of know it all” was suicidal for the state economy.

“The CNCCI once again reminds the state government that the business community knows the ground reality on business matter better than the people in government who are taking decision on our behalf,” read the statement.

On the statement made by the additional chief secretary and finance commissioner about the “devastating impact (of Covid-19) in the social and economic spheres”, the confederation suggested that the state government should first understand the concept.

“Unless Nagaland state has different economic dynamics, universally during such impact taxes and cess are cut as any increase of tax or cess will further push the social-economic impact to the edge. It warns the government to carefully read the storm on the horizon,” the CNCCI stated.

Further, it condemned the chief secretary’s statement that the government will give a different name and continue to impose it if the people were against ‘Covid-19 cess on petroleum products’.

The confederation stated that it would like to know the economics behind the chief secretary’s claim that “the increase in price of diesel and petrol will not increase the price of essential commodity in the state”.

“The state government, out of more than 20 lakh population, employs just about 2 lakh or 10% and rest of 90% population is dependent on farming, business and other economic activities. Therefore, it’s a simple logic that unless the state government is debunking the role of welfare state, it should not even have a second thought to rollback the cess immediately,” the statement read.

It advised the state government to first to put in place strong austerity measures.

“It suggests that large chunk of state income and revenue is spent on payment of salary, therefore from class-1 employees to CM office, 25% to 30% of salary should be kept on hold for the next six months and utilise it to tackle Covid-19 pandemic (Meghalaya has already implemented)…All purchase of Covid-19 related materials of substandard, non-functional and expired items should immediately be returned and money realised be used judiciously (RTI report published in local dailies). The government should know that a resource crunch state does not have the luxury of wastages of resource and burden the common man,” the CNCCI suggested.