Bhubaneswar: At least 10,000 traders in the city do not have trade licence, resulting in huge revenue loss for the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC), officials said.While identifying the trades and traders is a dynamic process, the BMC is yet to evolve a scientific approach to enrol new traders. As per the standard practice, new traders volunteer to register for a trade licence certificate. If they don’t take part in the process, they evade paying trade licence fees until they are caught during raids, officials said.Ajay Mohanty, BMC deputy commissioner (revenue), said the database of holding tax can be used to identify traders because holding tax is also collected from business establishments. “There are thousands of traders outside the trade licence ambit. New traders come, and old ones shut down business. Direct survey is not possible. We have an online registration system whereby traders self-declare about the nature of their business. There are different slabs of tariffs for different trades,” Mohanty said.If there are around 50,000 traders in Bhubaneswar, the civic body is receiving trade licence fees from around 40,000. Five years ago, about 50% of traders had the licence. Obtaining a trade licence is mandatory to run a business under BMC’s jurisdiction, officials said. “There are two ways to get evasive traders under the licence ambit. We have formed four teams that will conduct raids. If traders are found without a licence, they will be penalised, and the trade licence fee will also be collected,” Mohanty added.Earlier, BMC tried to fetch traders’ data from the power distribution company through the list of consumers. Out of them, it filtered the traders and segregated the data. Still many were left out. “BMC has the power to issue trade licence certificates and give permission to traders to run businesses under its jurisdiction under sections 554 and 617 of the Orissa Municipal Corporation Act, 2003,” Mohanty said. BMC has asked its officers to carry out regular checks to bring all the traders under its purview and make them pay the trade licence fees online. Prior to 2020, BMC had a database of only 13,000 traders, as many new traders were not identified, resulting in the civic body losing revenue. In Feb 2021, BMC signed a pact with a private agency to conduct a survey to bring left-out traders under the trade licence ambit but the move did not work out.
