TS borrowing to repay earlier borrowings: CAG

Hyderabad: The Controller and Auditor General (CAG) has pulled up the Telangana Government for the poor utilisation of borrowings. The State Finances Audit Report for 2021 disclosed that 76 per cent of the borrowings from the financial institutions and other agencies were utilized for the repayment of earlier borrowings. The CAG also pointed out the increasing dependency of the state government on Ways and Means Advances (WMA).

The report pointed out that the funds borrowed should have been used for fund capital creation and developmental activities. Using borrowed funds for meeting current expenditure and repayment of interest on outstanding loans is not sustainable, the CAG report observed. Out of Rs 1.85 lakh borrowings, the report said that 76.53 per cent was used for the repayment of the earlier borrowings, net capital expenditure (8.60 per cent), net loans and advances (5.84 per cent) and the portion of revenue expenditure was met out of net available borrowings which is to the extent of 9.03 per cent.

The average interest rate of outstanding public debt has decreased marginally during the past four years from 8.20 per cent to 7.89 per cent. However, this must be viewed in the background that the state government has been obtaining borrowings with very long maturity periods. Further, there was no evidence on record to show that the government has made any financial impact study for long maturity borrowings with marginally lesser interest rates.

The CAG said that the total borrowings have more than doubled during the past five years. While no revenue expenditure was met out of borrowed funds till 2018-19, during 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the revenue expenditure was met out of net available borrowings.

The report has revealed that interest payments on drawl of WMA (including Over Draft (OD)and Special Drawn Facility (SDF) during 2020-2021 was Rs 71.28 crore as against Rs 29.19 crore which was a significant increase of 144 per cent in just one year. On account of the Covid in 2021, the number of days on which the government depended on all three advances SDF, WMA and OD was 158 days which was also much higher than previous year (8 days). The total amount of all the advances taken during the year was Rs 69,453 crore which was considerably higher than the previous year.