Hyderabad: “Revenue-surplus” Telangana state is facing a huge revenue deficit in the ongoing financial year, with expenditure surpassing earnings. The auditing done by finance department for the April-October period revealed that the state is facing a deficit of nearly Rs 7,000 crore despite revenue-earning departments witnessing a decent growth rate of 15 per cent. With this, the finance department has alerted revenue earners like the commercial taxes, stamps and registration, excise and transport departments to step up efforts to collect tax arrears of the 2015-16 Budget, since just about two months are left.
The Finance Commission had declared Telangana to be the only ‘revenue-surplus state’ in the country after Gujarat last year. If Telangana has to retain this tag, it has to ensure higher revenue earnings than expenditure. The audit revealed that the expenditure is surpassing earnings every month due to hiked salaries for employees, crop loan waiver scheme, fee reimbursement, social security pensions and increased rice quota for BPL families.
In October last, while the revenue earnings were Rs 6,112 crore, the government had spent Rs 7,524 crore, resulting in a revenue deficit of Rs 1,412 crore. For the April-October period, the government earned Rs 36,104 crore, including the revenues it got from the Centre towards its tax share. The government spent Rs 43,076 crore, resulting in revenue deficit of Rs 6,972 crore.
The government is confident that TS would achieve a turnaround in the period from November 2015 to March 2016 and reclaim its ‘revenue-surplus’ tag. “The state gets a higher share of taxes from the Centre in the last quarter of the fiscal (January-March). Also the state’s own tax revenue increases in the last quarter with departments stepping up tax collection to meet Budget targets,” said a senior official of the finance department.
The government is seeking to enhance its borrowing limit to 3.5 per cent of the GSDP on the grounds of being a ‘revenue-surplus state’ for the last one year but the Centre is yet to give its nod.
