Friday, February 7, 2025

A tough nut to crack

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NAVEENA GHANATE
Hyderabad

The Telangana government is going to present its last full budget and all eyes are on it as the government is sure that tough times are ahead. The TS finance department is riddled with doubts as its gears up to present the budget in February. This budget will be the last full Budget of the TRS government and is expected to be a pre-election one. That means it may include spending promises to attract voters.

Officials are trying to put together an election-year welfare budget but are in the dark on ways to find money. With pressure to meet budget expectations, TS is looking at new revenue sources. Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar is holding back-to-back meetings to improve the GSDP. He has held meetings with agriculture, animal husbandry, industries and IT departments and will be holding meetings with other departments seeking “measures for improving GSDP.”

Improving GSDP can increase borrowing capacity and thereby FRBM limits. As the government’s term is ending in December 2023, it will present a full-fledged budget.In 2022-23, Telangana has managed to raise only 38.22 per cent of the projected total revenue receipts so far. As per the budget estimates of 2022-23, the TS government had targeted total revenue receipts of Rs 1.93 lakh crore. But only Rs 73,767.13 crore have been realised in the first six months till September.

In 2018, public spending helped TRS come back to power and there is clearly no compromise on freebies.

Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao has been saying that if the BJP comes to power all welfare schemes will be scrapped, and now the TRS cannot take the risk of even delaying the delivery of schemes. For 2022-23, the State paid Rs 10,100.47 crore as interest, Rs 18,829.07 crore for salaries and Rs 9,093.7 crore as pensions and Rs 4,834.54 crore as subsidies. The Centre has placed a cap on borrowings and now officials are running from pillar to post to fill the gap. According to FRBM Act provisions, the TS government was initially eligible to borrow Rs 53,970 crore, that is, 3.5 per cent of the GSDP, from the market in fiscal 2022-23. But the Centre placed curbs on taking loans due to off-budget borrowings and TS can now take only Rs 29,000 crore as loan till December.

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