Despite the Covid-19 pandemic drastically impacting Telangana’s economy in 2020-21, State Finance Minister T Harish Rao has presented a ₹2.31-lakh crore Budget for financial year 2021-22, up from last year’s Budget size of ₹1.82-lakh crore.
He pegged revenue expenditure of ₹1.69-lakh crore and capital expenditure of ₹29,046 crore for the financial year.
The fiscal deficit has gone up to ₹45,509 crore from ₹33,191 crore in the previous financial year.
Presenting the Budget in the Assembly on Thursday, he said, the State suffered heavily due to the lockdown imposed in the country. Pegging the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) for 2020-21 at ₹9.78-lakh crore, he said the growth rate in GSDP fell to 1.3 per cent in the year against a growth rate of 13.5 per cent in the previous financial year.
“While the Gross Domestic Product of the country saw a decline, Telangana bucked the trend and witnessed a growth rate of 1.3 per cent,” he said.
The growth was led by the primary sector, which grew by 17.7 per cent, while the secondary and services sectors saw decline of 5.2 per cent and 1.9 per cent respectively.
The per capita income in the State climbed by 0.6 per cent despite the losses suffered in the lockdown. “The per capita income in 2020-21 stands at ₹2.27 lakh against the national average of 1.27 lakh. Our per capita income has gone up while the national per capital income saw a decline by 4.8 per cent,” he said.
Stating that the roll-out of the vaccination programme would help revive economic activity in the country, he said, the State’s economy was on a gradual recovery path. “We expect that there would be significant improvement in the GSDP in the next financial year,” he said.
He said the State made great strides in agriculture, irrigation and power sectors after the formation of the State seven years ago.
“The total cultivated area in the State went up by 49 per cent to 2.12 crore acres in 2020-21 from 1.41 lakh acres in 2014-15. The total agricultural output during the same period went up to 4.11 crore tonnes against 2.5 crore tonnes in 2014-15,” he said.
The per capita power consumption of the state has increased from 1,110 units at the time of the state formation to 2,071 units by 2020-2021.
Key allocations
The Finance Minister has allocated ₹25,000 crore for the agricultural sector and ₹16,931 crore for the irrigation sector.
MLAs and MLCs will get ₹5 crore each for development of their respective constituencies. An amount of ₹800 crore was alloted for this purpose.
While the Rythu Bandhu (annual financial assistance of ₹10,000 each for farmers) gets ₹14,800 crore, farm loan waiver gets ₹5,225 crore, Rythu Bima (farmers’ insurance scheme) ₹1,200 crore and Metro Rail Project ₹1,000 crore.
For the development of airstrips in Tier-II cities, the Budget allocated has ₹100 crore.