Inflated budget figures harmful to state: Public Accounts Committee chief

Vijayawada: Public Accounts Committee chairman and YSRCP MLA Buggana Rajendranath Reddy lashed out at the TDP government for presenting inflated figures in the State Budget-2018-19.

Speaking to media at the state party office on Sunday, he pointed out that the false figures would be detrimental to the interests of the state and do more harm than good because neither the Central government nor any financial institution would believe these figures.

The YSRCP leader wondered how the state economy would suddenly change and gets surplus budget and said there was no match between the figures presented in the state budget and the report presented by the CAG. 

Stating the government had shown deficit budget for 2014-15, 2015-16, 2016-17 with deficit of Rs 24,000 crore, Rs7,300 crore and Rs17,000 crore respectively, Rajendranath Reddy asked how the government presented revenue surplus budget for 2018-19 with Rs 5,000 crore.

He said the TDP government had claimed that the state achieved over 11 percent GDP growth whereas the Central government got only 7.3 percent growth.

Alleging that the state government had presented inflated figures in view of the ensuring Assembly elections in the state, the PAC chief said the CAG in its report observed the state may get revenue deficit for 2018-19 but the government had claimed that there may be revenue surplus of Rs 5,000 crore.

Expressing apprehensions over growing loans of state government, the YSRCP leader said the loans of Andhra Pradesh exceeded Rs 2.5 lakh crore with annual interest payment of Rs 15,000 crore. When the TDP came to power in 2014, he said the state had loans of Rs one lakh crore and the government had taken Rs 1.50 lakh crore loans in the last four years. 

He said the per capita loan is Rs 25,000 in the state and four-member family has a loan of Rs 1 lakh. He questioned what the state had done to the people with the loans. Referring to the construction of capital Amaravati, he said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu could not prepare Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the construction of new capital Amaravati in his four-year rule.

Who will give funding for construction of capital when the state government did not finalised design and made a Detailed Project Report (DPR), he asked. He said the Chief Minister had visited many capitals of the world for the study and finally asked the film director S SRajamouli for the capital designs.