Final Report Fiscal Issues and Allocative Efficiency National Transport Development Policy Committee July 2012 Project Team Project Leader Rajesh Chadha Research Team Sourabh Bikas Paul Anjali Tandon Computer and Design Support Praveen Sachdeva Library Support B.B. Chand Secretarial Assistance Sudesh Bala FOREWORD An efficient and reliable transport system is an absolute necessity for the Indian economy’s rapid growth. Without that, both the goods and service sectors suffer in their domestic and global competitiveness. Indian policymakers have woken up to this fact. As the economy aspires to near double-digit growth rates over the next decade, and to recover from the current slide in the growth rate, huge investments are required in roads, railways, ports, and aviation. While the public sector can continue to play a role in building and maintaining transport infrastructure, policymakers have recognised the financial and managerial need for a much bigger role for the private sector and for public–private partnerships (PPP) if India is to have the transport infrastructure it so badly needs. India’s transport intensity—the share of transport services in total production costs--- is the highest among a group of eleven developed and developing countries. It is 11 per cent higher than in South Africa, 14 per cent higher than in China, and 38 per cent higher than in Brazil. These differences suggest that the Indian economy is far less efficient in its use of transport services than its BRICS comparators. The primary objective of this NCAER study commissioned by the National Transport Development Policy Committee was to comprehensively document and analyse the role of taxes and user charges in the Indian transport sector. The second objective of the study was to evaluate the potential gains to the economy if transport services become more efficient through the removal of inefficient taxes and other policy distortions. India’s complex tax regime and its current transport pricing systems are a culmination of overlapping, multiple taxes and user charges established over time and varying between the Centre and states and across transport modes. This complexity is an analyst’s nightmare, and adds substantially to the public and private sector’s cost of doing business by magnifying the inefficiency of the transport sector. A complex and inefficient tax regime in transport in turn adversely impacts the efficient allocation of productive resources because of the strong backward and forward linkages between the transport sector and the rest of the economy. Against this complexity, this study is the first comprehensive attempt at documenting and assessing this complex tax regime as it affects the transport sector. It can be a major step forward in exploring how more rationality and simplification can be brought to the regulatory and tax regimes in transport. For its second objective, the current complexity of India’s tax regime makes it impossible to use more conventional economic tools for assessing the potential overall gains to the economy if inefficient taxes and other policy distortions are removed. As an alternative approach, this study uses a computable general equilibrium model of the Indian economy to assess and quantify the impact of improving the efficiency of India’s transport sector. The results show consistent welfare gains through such improvements. There are underlying gains in trade and output, and the real returns to land, labour, and capital increase. Strong positive effects are observed in the manufacturing sectors, particularly those that are heavy users of transport. Finally, enhanced transport efficiency lowers the demand for energy and leads to environmentally friendly welfare gains. A uniform and transparent tax and pricing regime would greatly facilitate the efficiency gains of a more integrated common market in India, a move that is long overdue given the size of the economy and the aspirations for its continued rapid growth. I hope that the NCAER study’s recommendation for establishing a task force on transport taxes and user charges will be taken seriously and can begin to bring some order to India’s complex transport tax regime. In ending, I would like to thank Dr Rajesh Chadha and his team for this i highly timely and policy-relevant NCAER study and the NTDPC for requesting this important study from NCAER. Shekhar Shah Director-General New Delhi July 3, 2012 ii Acknowledgements We would like to convey our sincere thanks to the National Transport Development Policy Committee (NTDPC), Planning Commission, Government of India for entrusting NCAER with this important study. The NCAER research team has benefited immensely from the thoughtful advice, guidance and suggestions given by Dr. Rakesh Mohan, Chairman, NTDPC. We owe our gratitude to him. Shri B.N. Puri, Member Secretary, NTDPC and Dr. Anupam Khanna, Principal Adviser, NTDPC provided insightful suggestions during the course of this study. We received useful comments during our presentation at the Ninth Meeting of NTDPC held on March 23, 2011. We owe sincere thanks to Prof. Dinesh Mohan, Shri S. Sundar, Shri K.L. Thapar, Dr. Archana S. Mathur, Shri Arvind Kumar and Shri B.I. Singhal. Dr. Krishna Dev and Ms. Geeta Garg of NTDPC provided useful cooperation to NCAER research team. iii Table of Contents National Transport Development Policy Committee Fiscal Issues and Allocative Efficiency Executive Summary................................................................................................................................v Chapter 1: Fiscal Issues and Allocative Efficiency ..............................................................................1 1.1 Objectives.............................................................................................................................1 1.2 Motivation .............................................................................................................................1 1.3 Methodology .........................................................................................................................2 1.3.1 Road Transport.............................................................................................................3 1.3.2 Rail Transport ...............................................................................................................3 1.3.3 Water Transport............................................................................................................3 1.3.4 Aviation.........................................................................................................................4 1.4 The Importance of Transport Sectors.....................................................................................4 1.5 Efficient Tax Regime .............................................................................................................5 1.6 Outlay of the Report ..............................................................................................................6 Chapter 2: Taxes and User Charges in Transport Sectors: Comprehensive Documentation ...............8 2.1 Backdrop...............................................................................................................................8 2.2 Documentation....................................................................................................................10 2.2.1 Structure: Taxes and User Charges ............................................................................10 2.3 Observations.......................................................................................................................12 2.3.1 Civil aviation ...............................................................................................................12 2.3.2 Road Transport...........................................................................................................16 2.3.3 Water Transport..........................................................................................................25 2.4 Summary of Tax Burden......................................................................................................28 2.5 Tax Complexity ...................................................................................................................32 Chapter 3: Tax and Non-Tax Revenue, Sales and Capital Assets: Firm Level Documentation..........35 3.1 Introduction .........................................................................................................................35 3.2 Data....................................................................................................................................36 3.3 Tax Revenue.......................................................................................................................37 3.4 User Charges / Fees ...........................................................................................................39 3.5 Sales...................................................................................................................................40 3.6 Capital Assets .....................................................................................................................41 Chapter 4: Economic Linkages: Transport Sectors...........................................................................43 4.1 The Concept .......................................................................................................................43 4.2 Computation of Linkages.....................................................................................................43