Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Y. Ramakrishnudu on Wednesday introduced Rs. 1.11 lakh crore budget in the State Assembly.
The maiden budget of the new State has plan component of Rs. 26,673 crore while the non-plan expenditure is pegged at Rs. 85,151 crore. As anticipated, a huge deficit of over Rs. 19,000 crore is projected in the budget including Rs. 6,064 crore revenue deficit.
The Finance Minister who presented a tax free budget attributed the shortfalls faced by the State to the "irrational and unscientific manner" in which the then UPA Government went ahead with the bifurcation of the State. "From a revenue surplus budget in the united State, Andhra Pradesh is now facing deficits on revenue and fiscal fronts due to the manner in which bifurcation of the State happened," he said.
Mr. Ramakrishnudu tried to strike a fine balance between welfare and development. Accordingly, school education secured a major chunk of allocation at Rs. 12,595 crore followed by Irrigation Rs. 8,465 crore and Energy Rs. 7,164 crore. Backward Classes welfare has been allotted Rs. 3,130 crore and tribal welfare Rs. 1,150 crore while minority welfare department secured an allocation of Rs. 371 crore.
At the same time, the Government allotted significant amounts to Rural Development department (Rs. 6,094 crore) and Rural Water Supply scheme (Rs. 1,115 crore) while the Panchayat Raj department was given Rs. 4,260 crore. The Finance Minister said the new State was primarily agriculture based economy with less urbanisation as compared to Telangana and hence, significant allocation had been made to the rural sectors.
Equal emphasis was laid on development of cities and towns going by allocation of Rs. 3,134 crore to municipal administration and urban development department. On the infrastructure front, Mr. Ramakrishnudu said proposals had been sent to the Centre for establishing a major airport between Kakinada and Visakhapatnam while "no frills" airports had been proposed to be established in some more cities.
The State had decided to tap its human resources for achieving the targets set for IT development. The Government released a blue print covering 18 areas for IT development to achieve US $ 2 billion investments in software related services and another US $ 5 billion in electronic manufacturing by 2020.
The Government was contemplating planned decentralisation of services to ensure their effective delivery to the last mile while it was proposed to rejuvenate the administrative machinery that went off track due to the policies adopted by the previous Government.
