Hyderabad: The TS government will be going in for massive fund cuts earmarked for various sectors in budgetary allocations in the remaining four months of the current financial year 2016-17 to cope with the fallout of demonetisation.
The government, which had already lagged behind in meeting budgetary targets in the first six months (April-September) due to failure in realising expected revenues and steep increase in expenditure, further plunged into a crisis after the demonetisation announcement on November 8.
Fund allocations for most of the development programmes and welfare schemes will now be shown only on paper, without being actually spent, to avoid embarrassment for the government and backlash from the Opposition in the Legislature when the government presents the annual Budget for 2017-18, sometime in February.
To begin with, the government has proposed a huge cut in funds for irrigation projects. The TS government had created a record of sorts in the country when it earmarked Rs 25,000 crore for irrigation projects in the 2016-17 Budget presented in March this year.
The government has now proposed to trim this to just Rs 8,000 crore indicating the funds crunch being faced by the state. Similar cuts in funds in the range of 20 to 25 per cent are being proposed under heavy head in the Budget.
Finance minister Etela Rajender said, “We lost over Rs 1,000 crore in just the first two weeks after demonetisation and the losses are expected to cross Rs 3,000 crore in the next four months.”
Optimistic of a better financial position, the TS government had presented a jumbo Budget of Rs 1.29 lakh-crore in March this year. While Plan expenditure was pegged at Rs 72,195 crore, Non-Plan expenditure was Rs 61,622 crore. However, it fell short of spending even 35 per cent in the first six months of this fiscal. The Non-Plan expenditure increased sharply over Plan expenditure due to increase in salaries and DA for staff, leaving meagre funds for Plan expenditure.
The worst-affected on account of fresh fund cuts would be development programmes and welfare schemes. While funds for development programmes may come to a halt with no funds for laying of roads and other infrastructure facilities, welfare schemes would reach only a fraction of the beneficiaries.
