Trade licence: Corp expects revenue surge of over Rs 1cr

Kozhikode: City corporation authorities are expecting to fetch an additional revenue of over Rs 1 crore to its exchequer with the replacement of the existing dangerous and offensive traders and factories (D&O) licence with the ‘license to factories, traders, entrepreneurship activities and other services’.
Corporation health officials have informed that with the enactment of the new licensing facility, around 45,000 people in the city will be brought under the purview of trade licences instead of the current 26,554 licensees.
All the service providers, including small-scale traders, offices, online services providers and entrepreneurs, will have to take trade licence from the corporation to operate their business.
The civic body has prepared a draft in which trade ventures are categorized as manufacturing and service sectors into five slabs under micro, mini, small, medium and large enterprises categories. The draft proposed an annual licence fee ranging from Rs 3,000 to Rs 50,000 based on the capital investment involved in setting up the ventures.
According to corporation officials, the draft proposes annual licence fee for micro enterprises with a capital investment not exceeding Rs 25 lakh would be Rs 3,000 in manufacturing and service sectors, mini enterprises with capital investment exceeding Rs 25 lakh and not exceeding Rs 1 crore would be Rs 5,000 and Rs 15,000 licence fee is proposed for small enterprises with capital investment of Rs 1 to 5 crore.
It is proposed to have a Rs 25,000 fee for medium business ventures, which requires capital investment between Rs 5 and 10 crore. The licence fee goes up to Rs 50,000 for businesses with huge capital investment of above Rs 10 crore. Corporation health officer R S Gopakumar said that the civic body was expecting an increase in revenue with the enactment of substituted licencing system, which covers service sector.
“So far, the service sector was excluded from the purview of trade licence. The civic body has already commenced a special drive to shut down traders operating business without the corporation licence to avoid revenue loss. We expect at least 30,000 increase in trade license with the ongoing drive,” he said adding that the civic body will start issuing new trade licence adhering to licence to factories, traders, entrepreneurship activities and other services once the government issues gazette notification for its enforcement of substituted trade licence,’’ he said.
“The new fee will be based on the capital investment involved in establishing the enterprise,’’ he said.