Telangana govt presents tax-free budget for 2021-22

The Telangana government presented a tax-free Budget for 2021-22, proposing a total expenditure of ₹2.30 lakh crore expenditure.

Hyderabad: The Telangana government on Thursday presented a tax-free Budget for 2021-22, proposing a total expenditure of ₹2,30,825.96 crore with major allocations made for panchayat raj and rural development, agriculture, irrigation, social security pensions and others.

The budget proposed ₹29,271 crore for panchayat raj and rural development and ₹25,000 crore for agriculture and ₹16,391 crore for irrigation sector.

It proposed a new scheme "CM Dalit Empowerment Programme", with an allocation of ₹1,000 crore, besides ₹5,225 crore towards crop loan waiver as per the ruling TRS's assurance duringthe last assembly polls to waive crop loans up to Rs one lakh and ₹11,728 crore for 'Aasara' (social security) pensions scheme.

The benefits of the new scheme would accrue to the Scheduled Castes.

Of the ₹2,30,825.96 crore, revenue expenditure is ₹1,69,383.44 crore and capital expenditure ₹29,046.77 crore.

"Revenue surplus in the budget is estimated at ₹6,743.50 crore and the estimated fiscal deficit is ₹45,509.60 crore," state Finance Minister T Harish Rao said in his budget speech.

On the adverse impact of COVID-19 on state economy, the budget said while the country's GDP growth at current prices in 2020-21 is estimated to be at -3.8 per cent, in Telangana, the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) is estimated to be at +1.3 per cent.

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In these adverse times, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, while initiating efficient measures to protect the health of the people, also took precautionary steps to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on the state economy, it said.

"With these efforts, Telangana confidently faced the challenges thrown up by corona in both health sector and the economy sector."

Observing that the state economy is on a gradual recovery path as society is gradually recovering with the availability of vaccines for COVID-19, the budget said it is expected there would be significant improvement in the GSDP of the state in the next financial year.

The budget has been formulated accordingly.

As per advance estimates, GSDP at current prices in 2020-21 is estimated at ₹9,78,373 crore.

With the adverse impact of COVID-19 and the lockdown, the growth of GSDP declined significantly from 13.5 per cent in 2019-20 to 1.3 per cent in 2020-21.

The national GDP growth declined from 7.8 per cent to -3.8 per cent in the same period. As compared with the national GDP growth, state GSDP growth is much better, it said.

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The per capita income of Telangana is estimated to increase by 0.6 per cent, compared to the previous year, to ₹2,27,145 in 2020-21. On the other hand, the country's per capita income is estimated to decline by 4.8 per cent to ₹1,27,768.

"Despite adverse conditions, the Telangana per capita income showed increase. This is proof that the economy of Telangana is in a better state even during the adverse situation. It is evident that Telangana has emerged as a major economic power in the country," the budget said.

Under the Constituency Development Fund, the government has decided to provide each MLA and MLC with Rs five crore for the development of his/her constituency.

The guidelines in this regard would be released shortly.

An amount of ₹21,306.85 crore has been proposed in Budget Estimates 2021-22 towards SCs Special Development Fund and ₹12,304.23 crore towards STs Development Fund.

Among others, the amount proposed in budget estimates 2021-22 for construction of the new Secretariat is ₹610 crore.

The budget for last year was at over ₹1.82 lakh crore.

PTI