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A challenge before the A Revanth Reddy-led Congress government in Telangana is how to generate revenues to implement the public welfare budget proposals presented on Thursday. However, the State Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu, who also holds the Finance and Energy portfolio and his team were confident that they will be able to meet the expenses in the Budget.
The total expenditure proposed for the FY25 is ₹2,91,159 crore. The revenue expenditure is proposed at ₹2,20,945 crore and the capital expenditure proposed is ₹33,487 crore.
To a question from businessline on where the State is going to generate revenues, he said: “The Government is looking at multiple options for the purpose, besides arresting leakages and pilferages to ensure that revenues required to fulfil the targets set in the budget as well as the commitments under six guarantees are mobilised.”
K Ramakrishna Rao, Telangana Finance Secretary said: “We are confident that we can match the figures projected in the budget. Last financial year there has been a slowdown in the country as well as in Telangana. The growth rate has been slowing down. But because of the low base, this year, it will see growth. We are very hopeful that we will have the numbers.”
Bhatti and his team, however, did not share the areas from where resources will be generated. Bhatti said that there is a cabinet sub-committee on resource mobilisation which meets every Friday to assess the situation and ascertain various resource generation avenues.
He said that the tax collection remained stable in the first quarter and it will further improve by the third quarter. The Minister said that the Government was hopeful of significant improvement in the tax revenues during this fiscal.
Loans of pervious regime
To another question, he said the Government was paying ₹5,365 crore a month towards interest and principal of the loans availed by the previous regime. He went on to say, “compare this to payment of ₹605 crore towards interest and principal annually in 2014-15.”
Substantiating his claim, he said the Congress Government had opted for borrowings of ₹35,118 crore since taking charge while it had repaid ₹42,892 crore towards interest and principal.
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