Telangana government is getting ready for its budget preparation for 2020-21 with the Finance Department starting its department-wise meetings from Wednesday.
A preparatory meeting held by the Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar last week with various department officials made it clear that the budget estimates for the 2020-2021 financial year should be realistic in tune with the prevailing economic situation.
The budget is expected to be presented in the third week of February after the presentation of Union Budget on February 1 that gives clarity about Central fund allocation to the State.
The department-wise meetings with the Finance Department will be wrapped up before this month-end and then the departments will discuss their proposals with the Chief Secretary, and finally the Chief Minister, for approval.
The expectation is that the budget outlay for 2020-21 will not be much higher than that of ₹1.46 lakh crore of current fiscal given the fall in the GDP growth of the country and fall in expected revenue for the State due to slowdown.
The departments would look at the expenditure incurred so far in the nine months of the current fiscal and prepare the estimates realistically for the next budget 2020-21. The approval of the Minister concerned for the budget estimates should be obtained and new works with high expenditure would be set aside and those projects that were already commenced and nearing completion be given priority.
The Chief Secretary also gave instructions that there should be no dearth of funds for government’s priority programmes in the budget estimates.
The vote on account that was presented in February 2019 with an outlay of ₹1.82 lakh crore was pruned to ₹1.46 lakh crore in September last year when full budget was presented for 2019-20 owing to economic slowdown witnessed across the country.
Instructions
About two months ago, instructions were also given to the departments to restrict their expenditure in tune with fall in the revenue.
Of the ₹1.46 lakh crore outlay, ₹10,000 crore has been expected to be mobilised from land sales but that did not materialise.
Thus the actual budget outlay for 2019-20 is ₹1.36 lakh crore.
At one time, the shortfall in the revenue expenditure was about ₹15,000 crore but with recent revision of liquor prices, the tax revenue improved and the revenue growth rate by the end of December increased to 9.1% from below 3%.
The official sources said that they hoped to close the financial year by bringing down the shortfall to meet the estimated budget expenditure for 2019-20.
The government the other day gave administrative sanction for ₹5,100 crore under Rythu Bandhu and ₹3,000 crore would be released first once the Agriculture Department furnished the details of bank accounts of farmers in a day or two.
Market borrowings
Meanwhile, the State, which availed ₹27,000 crore loans through market borrowings so far, can avail another ₹6,000 crore under the FRBM limit of 3.25% of GSDP by the end of current fiscal.
This should help in meeting the estimated budget expenditure for the current fiscal, sources said.
