The budget of State Legislature will commence on Monday without the traditional Governor’s address to a joint session of both Houses. Finance Minister T. Harish Rao will straightaway present the budget in Assembly while the same will done by Legislative Affairs Minister V. Prashant Reddy in the Legislative Council at 11 a.m.
The government has decided to skip the Governor’s address on the ground that the earlier session was not prorogued, which meant this would not be a fresh session. The Governor found fault with this argument saying any session after a long recess would automatically be a fresh one. So, by Parliamentary practice a budget session has to be addressed by the Governor.
The duration of the session and the issues that should be taken up during the session would be decided by the Business Advisory Committee of the legislature which is likely to meet soon after the presentation of budget by Mr. Harish Rao. The State Cabinet which met under the chairmanship of Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday evening gave its nod for next year’s budget.
There is, however, no clarity about the actual size of the budget, probably the last full-fledged budget of the current dispensation. Though the details of the outlay for the next fiscal are unavailable as of now, expectations are that the budget size would be higher than the current year’s ₹ 2.3 lakh crore.
The State has several commitments to fulfill like making budgetary allocations to Dalit Bandhu, allocations for Rythu Bandhu, salaries/wages and pensions and disbursal of Aasara social security pensions to eligible. The Chief Minister has announced in the past that ₹20,000 crore would be earmarked annually for implementation of Dalit Bandhu, involving a one-time grant of ₹ 10 lakh each to eligible Dalit families, from the next financial year.
Simultaneously, the government has decided to continue the implementation of Rythu Bandhu, the investment support scheme for farmers, estimated at around ₹ 16,000 crore a year. Allocation for salaries/wages and pensions would be close to ₹ 40,000 crore thanks to the revised pay scales being implemented for the employees at all levels while the government had promised issuance of a spree of notifications for recruitments to vacant posts. This apart, the government has to earmark funds for payment of subsidies like power subsidy and expenditure on account of interest payment which was of the order of ₹ 17,584 crore during the current fiscal.
On the revenue earning front, the State Government has witnessed impressive performance in collection of GST, Excise duties, sales tax, Registration and Stamps and other departments which are fast returning to normalcy after being hit by COVID-19 pandemic for two years. Accordingly, the target for the State’s own tax revenue could be around ₹ 1.9 lakh crore for the next year against the ₹ 1.76 lakh crore estimated for the current fiscal.
The State is pinning high hopes on raising substantial amounts through sale of lands next fiscal while it is also said to be fine tuning the new and comprehensive mining policy envisaging significant rise in collection of non-tax revenue. The State is however likely to rely on borrowings and other liabilities as like the current year when the quantum through borrowings had been estimated at ₹ 45,559 crore. The same trend is likely to be witnessed the next fiscal too.
