The Bihar government on Monday presented a ₹1.60 lakh crore Budget for the year 2017-18 with no proposal of any fresh tax. The thrust of the budget was “development, poverty alleviation and financial stability,” Finance Minister Abdul Bari Siddiqui said.
Presenting a revenue surplus budget of ₹14,555.59 crore in the Assembly, Mr. Siddiqui said: “We’ve presented a Budget expenditure of ₹1,60,085.69 crore for 2017-18, which is Rs. 15,389.42 crore more than the current year’s budget estimate of Rs. 1,44,696.27 crore.” “We’ve not proposed any fresh taxes in the budget,” he later told reporters.
“We’ve maintained fiscal prudence despite Centre’s apathetic attitude coupled with other problems that plagued the State like demonetisation, change in funding pattern of Central schemes, State not getting special package or special category status,” he said.
The budget has also mentioned the difficulties the State government faced due to demonetisation. “We never faced such a situation in our life when we had to face currency crunch for 100 days that adversely affected employment, income, expenditure and daily life of the people in the State. This happened because we have an economy run on 94 per cent cash. We have not been able to adopt digital transaction,” the Finance Minister said.
“How come the State’s budget is affected by demonetisation when the last fiscal months of this year till March have not been included in the budget?...This budget has nothing new to offer… rather it’s a depressing one,” said noted economist and political scientist Nawal Kishore Chaudhury.
