Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Anam Ramanarayana Reddy presented a budget of Rs. 1.61 lakh crore for 2013-14 fiscal in the Legislative Assembly on Monday.
Introduced with a heavy accent on welfare, the budget is 10 per cent higher than the previous year’s outlay of Rs. 1.45 lakh crore. Plan expenditure is estimated at Rs. 59,422 crore (up 10 per cent over the previous year’s Rs. 54,030 crore) while the non-plan allocation too had a similar increase from Rs. 91,854 crore to Rs. 1.01 lakh crore.
In line with the SC/ST Sub Plan Act enacted recently, the Finance Minister made Rs. 8,58 crore allocation to the scheduled caste sub plan, constituting 16.21 per cent of the plan budget while an amount of Rs. 3,666 crore has been earmarked for the tribal sub plan, accounting for 6.92 per cent of the Plan size.
The State for the first time witnessed presentation of a policy statement on the agriculture sub-plan by Minister for Agriculture Kanna Lakshminarayana. It has an overall provision of Rs. 6,128 crore for agriculture and allied sectors. The social welfare department was given a significant hike from Rs. 2,677 crore to Rs. 4,122 crore while the outlay for tribal welfare has been enhanced by to Rs. 2,126 crore from Rs. 1,552 crore.
Backward classes welfare got close to 25 per cent hike from Rs. 3,014 crore to Rs. 4,027 crore while the Minority welfare had been more than doubled to Rs. 1,027 crore from Rs. 488 crore. Housing with Rs. 2,326 crore, integrated rural development (Rs. 11,200 crore), health (Rs. 6,481 crore), school education (Rs. 16,990 crore) and energy (Rs. 7,117 crore) were other departments that received significant enhancement in allocation.
Earlier, fifteen members of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) were suspended from the House when they repeatedly obstructed the proceedings of the Assembly.
