TRS's Harish Rao seeks release of GST compensation

Hyderabad: Finance Minister T Harish Rao poured out the economic woes being faced by the state before the GST Council and requested the Centre to come to the rescue of Telangana in the crisis time arising out of the lockdown which has been enforced after the coronavirus exploded in India.

Participating in the virtual 40th GST Council meeting organised by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Harish Rao said there is a huge fall in revenues under the impact of the lockdown and Telangana is not in a position to pay full salaries to the government employees. Harish Rao appealed to the Centre to release the devolution funds for the state for June 2020 and GST compensation amount of Rs 3975 crore for the months of April and May 2020 immediately.

Expressing gratitude to the Union Minister for the reversal of IGST amount of Rs 1.76 lakh crore from the Consolidated Fund of India, which is a long-standing demand of Telangana, he urged the Union minister to release Telangana share of Rs 2800 crore at the earliest.

Any shortfall in the release of GST compensation will affect many programmes being implemented by the state, the minister said.

He explained that the assured GST revenue with growth of 14% is taken into the budget as it is promised by the Centre and any failure in fulfilment of this assurance will lead to a difficult situation in the implementation of many welfare schemes.

"Telangana has performed well in revenue front and is one of the few states which had taken little GST compensation from the Centre since the introduction of the GST. When the need for compensation arises and the Centre is not coming forward to fulfil its obligation, it will be very disappointing to the state," he said.

Explaining that Telangana is not getting any revenue on account of revenue deficit and 15th Finance Commission also not favoured the state by reducing the state share in the devolution.

Telangana has achieved the highest revenue target since the implementation of the GST in July, 2017 and did not take any compensation during the years 2017-18 and 2018-19," he added.

The minister requested the Union Minister to release the Compensation to the state for the months of April and May 2020 as the State is facing severe revenue shortfall due to Covid-19 lockdown.