A huge revenue deficit continues to face Telangana in the pandemic year as its tax and non-tax revenue receipts failed to make an impact despite significant drop in revenue expenditure in January over the previous month.
According to the data put out by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Friday, the State government earned a tax revenue of ₹ 60,424.72 crore and non-tax revenue of ₹ 2,801.66 crore up to January-end, which was 59.22 per cent and 9.16 per cent respectively of the budget estimates for 2020-21. Overall, the revenue deficit was ₹ 23,770.57 crore against an estimate of ₹ 4,482 crore. While the revenue receipts were ₹ 74,990.94 crore, the revenue expenditure was ₹ 98,761.51 crore.
The tax revenue was mainly mopped from GST (₹ 20,146.21 crore, including State’s share of CGST which was ₹ 2,850.96 crore), sales tax (₹ 16,416.87 crore) and State excise duties (₹ 11,443.50 crore). The State’s share of Union taxes other than CGST component was ₹ 5,870.32 crore which was far below the projected budget estimate of ₹ 10,906.51 crore. The government’s woes were compounded by negative grants-in-aid from Centre and contributions to the extent of ₹ 253.50 crore. Thus, the receipts in this category fell from ₹ 12,018 crore in December to ₹ 11,764.56 crore in January.
A silver lining to the efforts of the government was a steep slash in revenue expenditure, excluding interest payments, salaries and wages, pensions and subsidies, from ₹ 9,525.94 crore in December to ₹ 5,162.06 crore in January. The total revenue expenditure comprising all the above heads itself was ₹ 98,761.51 crore against the budget estimate of ₹ 1.38 lakh crore.
The government also curtailed its capital expenditure to peg the same at 54.83 per cent of the budget estimates. But, the payout in this category in January was much higher at ₹ 2,339.61 crore than in November and December.
