Exploiting non-tax revenue sources better

The term 'beg, borrow or steal' is used to describe a situation where one does need to achieve or acquire something by any means. The government in-charge of economic management of a country is required to keep the state coffer filled up with resources by any means. And to make that happen, in addition to mopping up resources through tax and non-tax measures, the only other option that the government here usually makes use of extensively is borrowing from both domestic and external sources. The second source despite being cheaper cannot be heavily relied upon because of the declining flow of funds and conditions attached to the same. In the case of domestic borrowing, the government, however, can borrow as much as it wants. But there are downsides in terms of interest payment load, credit flow to the private sector and inflation.
The best option, thus, left to the government is the mobilisation of  maximum possible resources domestically through tax and non-tax measures. The collection of tax revenue has recorded improvement in recent years. Yet it remains well below in compassion with other Asian countries primarily due to excessive use of a variety of tax incentives, structural flaws in the main taxes and weak tax administration. The recent decline in net foreign financing and the lacklustre performance in the collection of direct tax and value added tax revenue are, apparently, forcing the government to look for other sources to boost its revenue earning. In fact, greater dependence on costly domestic borrowing for deficit financing--the effective interest rate of domestic debt is estimated at 11.4 per cent-- has emerged as a major concern for the government.
Now, the Finance Division under the Ministry of Finance, reportedly, has set its eye on the non-tax revenue sources that make available resources equivalent to about of 18 per cent of the tax revenue earning of the government.  The non-tax revenue receipt nearly doubled in last four financial years without any fresh adjustments and hike in fees and charges for many years. The Finance Division feels that the revenue earning from non-tax sources could be substantially increased through fresh endeavours. The size of the non-tax revenue in proportion to the total revenue income of some other Asian countries is also higher.
The main areas of non-tax revenue are dividend and profit earned from both financial and non-financial institutions, interest income, administrative fees and charges and receipts from services rendered by various public sector agencies. There is scope to increase earning from these sources through appropriate measures. For instance, the government can have higher revenue by revamping the financial performance of a number of state-owned organisations and disposing of the loss-incurring ones.
It also can ensure higher revenue by plugging the leakages in the collection of fees and charges by various service-rendering agencies. More importantly, the government does need to improve the quality of services offered to the public by various state-owned entities. Any hike in government fees and charges without effecting the much-needed improvement in the quality of service rendered by the relevant agencies would only create dissatisfaction among the people and defeat the very objective of raising revenue earning.