Telangana Budget goes haywire

​Hyderabad: With non-plan expenditure increasing by leaps and bounds, the Annual Budget of Telangana State appears to be going haywire.

As a consequence, the state government is set to go for at least 15 per cent cut in budgetary allocations earmarked in the 2016-17 financial year for all sectors, including the key sectors like irrigation, agriculture, health and education.

The reason for such a grim situation, according to top sources, is the abnormal increase in the non-plan expenditure, non-realisation of land sales and failure in achieving targets in property tax collection which have landed the state in financial trouble, forcing the government to reduce the funds by about 15 per cent of the planned outlay of Rs 67,630 crore.

The total budget outlay for this financial year was Rs 1,30,415.87 crore out of which Rs 67,630.46 crore has been earmarked under plan expenditure and Rs 67,785 was allocated under non-plan.

The sources in the Finance Department told The Hans India that they were facing problem on account of steep hike in the DA (Dearness Allowances) to all government employees and filling up of large number of vacancies and other additional appointments.

As a result, the government has been facing an additional financial burden of nearly Rs 500 crore every month for the last four months.

The other important factor that had pushed Telangana into financial crisis was on account of the government failing to reach the targets from land sales and properties.

The government had set Rs 10,900 crore revenue target from land sales but it could hardly earn Rs 4,000 crore.

The main obstacle for not realising the targets from the land sales and properties is due to pending land disputes in the courts for years.

Despite a surge in realty sector in the Greater Hyderabad limits, government’s in-activeness in dealing with the land issues intensified financial woes, officials rued.

Though the government succeeded in achieving targets in tax revenues from commercial taxes,
stamps and registration, excise and transport departments in the first two quarters, meager revenue from land sales has put a big hole in the state exchequer, official said, adding that considering the precarious financial position, the only option before the government would be to downsize the quantum of release of funds to the departments and decided to trim the budget by 15 per cent of the total allocations to every department.

The Irrigation department, which has been given top priority with allocation of Rs 25,000 crore in the planned budget, is also no exception and would face fund crunch in the next six months.

Though the government claims that the cut in release of funds would be across the departments, experience shows that under such circumstances, the government normally resorts to huge cut in welfare and social sectors.

The sources said the impact of this situation was already being seen as there has been immense delay in release of funds for some of the important schemes like Arogyasri, fee reimbursement and other welfare and development schemes.

The officials said that the instructions have been given to all the departments to adopt strict financial discipline and change their priorities during the second half of the financial year.