Finance minister Buggana to interact with ministers on budget proposals on Monday

Amaravati: The Finance Minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy is mulling to interact with all the Cabinet Ministers from Monday onwards to discuss on demands to be proposed in the ensuing Budget 2020-21.

The Finance Department has been giving first priority to the flagship welfare schemes under the Navaratnalu. As all the programmes of the State government are new, the officials have been brainstorming on allocations to them. After the salaries, the welfare programmes are going to take the lion's share in the Budget, observed a senior IAS officer at the Secretariat.

On the expenditure side, the government facing new burden from both salaries and welfare schemes. The chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has inducted around 1.20 Lakh employees in Village and Ward Secretariats, nearly 3 lakh Volunteers and about 53,000 employees were absorbed from APSRTC into State government. The government has been spending at least Rs 300 Cr on the newly recruited employees and another roughly Rs 300 cr on the absorbed APSRTC employees. At the same time, the newly introduced welfare schemes also became a huge burden on the public exchequer. Even though the majority of the Navaratnalu are already in execution, the exact budget estimations yet to be finalized, informed the officials at the Finance Department.

On the other hand, the government could not get the estimated revenue in the ongoing Financial Year.

As the State government has been suffering from the financial problems due to decrease in revenue in the past eight months, it has been high hopes on the ensuing Union Budget to be presented in the Parliament by the Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1.

It is known that the State got only Rs 52,551 Cr as revenue, out of expected Rs 89,348 Cr for the first six months in the ongoing Financial Year. In the Budget Estimations for 2019-2020, it was estimated that a total of Rs 1,78,697 Cr will get as Revenue Receipts.

Officials at the Finance Department informed that due to non-availability of the sand for a long period, the construction activity came to a standstill. Which indirectly reduced the sales of cement, iron and expenditure on the workforce. All these were led to a reduction in revenue. Apart from that the state government also imposed many restrictions on the liquor sales. In addition to that, the revenue from the Stamps and Registrations department also fell down. The GST share of the state government is also not optimum.

At this juncture, the state government has been expecting special incentives from the centre, in the Union Budget.