The State continues to face a tough situation in terms of finances as it could not achieve the targets set for raising revenues on expected lines.
As a result, the State is forced to avail various facilities of financial accommodation provided by the Reserve Bank of India for meeting its immediate requirements pertaining to a host of welfare and developmental programmes initiated for different sections. The tight financial situation can be gauged from the fact that the State opted for special drawing facility provided by the RBI on all days of May totalling ₹711.65 crore.
Going by the data given in the RBI’s bulletin released recently, the State had availed of ways and means advances amounting to ₹ 1,295.52 crore on all the 31 days in May. In addition to special drawing facility and ways and means advances, the State went for overdraft of ₹912.98 crore for 18 days during May, according to the RBI bulletin.
The dependence on these instruments reflects the pressure on the Finance department for raising resources required for implementing flagship programmes like Rythu Bandhu and Dalit Bandhu as well as the commitments that should be fulfilled in the form of debt servicing. Expenditure on interest payment was to the tune of ₹1,631.62 crore in April and ₹ 3,162.25 crore in May, according to the provisional data submitted to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India.
Revenue receipts were not up to the expected levels during the first two months with the State registering ₹19,956.2 crore, a little over 10 per cent of the ₹1.93 lakh crore projected for the financial year in the budget estimates. Of this, the tax revenue was ₹18,751.39 crore, 14.81 per cent of the ₹1.26 lakh crore projected for the fiscal.
Coupled with this, the RBI bulletin said in terms of spatial distribution, Telangana along with Haryana, Sikkim and Andhra Pradesh experienced high inflation in excess of 8 per cent whereas Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Himachal Pradesh recorded inflation in the range of 4 to 6 per cent.
