Haryana government officials here estimate the loss at approximately Rs 250 crore by March, due largely to lack of stamp duty revenue generated by Gurgaon, the state’s biggest real estate market that contributes the most to the government kitty.

According to state government records, revenue collected from stamp duty had gone northward in the early 1990s as the real estate boom began. From Rs 101 crore in 1990-91, the revenue department showed collections of Rs 1,373 crore from stamp duty in 2005-06. And the figure stood at Rs 1,764 crore in the last fiscal.

According to stamp and registration department officials in Chandigarh, going by the same trend, the figure should have crossed the Rs 2,000-crore in March 2009. But the department encountered the first setback last October, when it predicted a collection dip of Rs 50 crore compared to October 2007. The department had collected Rs 1,190 crore from April-November 2007, which went down to Rs 1,140 crore in April-November 2008, a Revenue department official said.

The official said the shortfall came in the month of October, and going by the same trend the department expects the shortfall to come to around Rs 250 crore.

“We doubt if we will even manage to close at what was collected in 2007-08,” the official said.

Of 20 districts in Haryana, Gurgaon contributes to approximately 60 percent of the net stamp duty collected annually. And 90 per cent of the total stamp duty collected comes from sale or transfer of property, officials said.

They said the reduction of stamp duty from 6 per cent to 5 per cent in June 2008, introduced to encourage property registration, did not help either.

Property dealer Rajesh Sharma of JMD Associates said: “The government earns most of its stamp duty revenue from re-sale of properties, which decides value of any property in the real estate market. And the major decrease in deals is now showing on the revenue collection.” He said the toll on the real estate market is psychological than due to fluctuation in interest rates. “People have money but are not investing in property,” Sharma said. “If this trend continues, property rates might fall further.”

Praveen Singh, director of Balaji Properties and Developers, said, “There has been a fall in property rates between 10 per cent and 15 per cent in Gurgaon. Only those who actually want homes are visible in the market at present; investors are nowhere to be seen.”