Yanamala Ramakrishnudu challenges CM to come for open debate

Vijayawada: Former Finance Minister and TDP politburo member Yanamala Ramakrishnudu on Sunday dared Chief Minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy to come for an open debate on the heavy debt burden on the State. In a press release here, Yanamala said the Chief Minister and his Cabinet colleagues had been changing tack quite frequently on the future of Andhra Pradesh with regard to the liabilities of the State. "I am ready for an open debate with the Chief Minister in the presence of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) officials on the borrowings of the State," Yanamala said.

Expressing anguish at the distortion of the facts though as an experienced economist he had been narrating certain facts on the State's economic condition, Yanamala said that even Constitutional authorities like the CAG were being misled by the government. "Is it not a fact that the CAG has openly stated that the details are not being submitted to it," he asked.

The Chief Minister was resorting to false propaganda that the State was going for fewer borrowings than earlier, he said adding that Jagan would go down in history as the Chief Minister who made the maximum borrowings. He was more focusing on raising debts and misusing these funds than really working for the welfare of the State, Yanamala regretted.

The total debt burden on the State from 1956 till 2019 was Rs 2.53 lakh crore while Jagan, in these three-and-half-years inflated the level of loan burden to Rs 6.38 lakh cr, the former Finance Minister pointed out. This apart, the dues to be paid to the employees as salaries and the bills to be cleared for the contractors amount to thousands of crores of rupees, he said.

This clearly indicated that by the time Jagan's five-year term ends the total debts might cross even Rs 11 lakh cr, he said. Observing that the total debt during the TDP regime was Rs 1,63,981 cr of which major share was allotted to capital expenditure, Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said during these three-and-half years, after the YSRCP came to power, the major share of debts was allotted to revenue expenditure.

The audit report of 2019-20 clearly mentioned that Rs 26,000 cr off-budget borrowings were not reflected in the budget, and in 2020-21 and 2021-22 too the off-budget borrowings were not presented even to the CAG thus burying the facts, Yanamala said.

He demanded that the balance-sheets of the corporations be brought before the public domain and the Chief Minister come for an open debate to present the facts before the people.