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Bhubaneswar, Dec 11: The Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation has hit a record low with its online trade licence service that it introduced three years ago. Not a single trader has applied online for licences because of lack of awareness.
The service was rolled out by the civic body to cut the red tape involved in getting a trade licence from the civic body.
Trade licences are issued by BMC both manually and online to businessmen doing trade in the city.
To get a trade licence, one has to apply online after which BMC would send one of its workers to assess the area of the commercial establishment, based on which the licence amount be fixed. Once the assessment is done, the applicant would be asked to pay the requisite amount to get a licence either online or manually.
Every year, BMC issues more than 20,000 trade licences to vendors and hawkers resulting in huge revenue for the corporation. The civic body had in 2013-14 collected nearly `4 crore as trade licence revenue while this fiscal it has set a target of `5 crore.
However, traders have given the online trade licence service the cold shoulder as not even a single licence has been issued online by the corporation since the inception of the service in 2011 under the e-governance programme, BMC authorities told Orissa Post.
BMC deputy secretary Subhranshu Mishra said that though the service is functional, very few traders are aware of it. “The online service has failed to evoke a good response because of lack of awareness among city traders and street vendors. BMC will sensitise traders to get licences online,” he remarked.
“BMC has got no powers to initiate action against those evading taxes and in this case the corporation has made no efforts to sensitise traders about online licence facility,” chairman of taxation and finance standing committee and ward no. 29 corporator Sheikh Nizamuddin said.