Hyderabad: Slowdown may take toll on budget allocations

Hyderabad: Telangana State Government will move cautious in finalisation of the budget outlay for the new financial year of 2020-21 which begins from April 1. Taking serious note of the impact of the current slowdown in the economy, Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has instructed the officials of the state Finance department to be cautious in allocation of funds to each scheme for the coming financial year.

The Chief Minister held a high-level budget preparation meeting attended by state Finance Minister T Harish Rao, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar, Finance Secretary K Ramakrishna and others at Pragathi Bhavan. The CM analysed the trends in the revenue generation particularly GST collections in the state and reviewed the prospects of the increase of state-owned tax revenues also.

Official sources said, "KCR is wary of the increasing financial burden and the efforts need to be taken by the government to raise the revenues."

In the current financial year, the government has projected a realistic budget. On the similar lines, the new budget will also be prepared taking into account the growth in the revenues.

State revenue growth has come down to nearly 19 per cent from 22 per cent this year. The chances of steady growth in the revenues is visible but it depends on the overall growth in the GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product).

It is learnt that the Chief Minister instructed the officials to maintain balance in the allocation of funds between welfare and developmental programmes. The government reduced drastically the allocations to certain developmental schemes in the current year.

As a result, many developmental programmes came to a grinding halt. The allocations for all welfare schemes will remain the same in the new financial year and budget allocations to infrastructure development schemes is unlikely to be increased.

State Finance Secretary submitted the budget proposals of every department to the Chief Minister and explained the requirement of more funds to implement the enhanced pension amount and otherschemes.