Hyderabad: The Telangana government, which has begun its Budget exercise, is eagerly waiting for the Union Budget to be presented in Parliament on February 1 by Union finance minister Arun Jaitley.
The state government, which is likely to present its Budget on March 15, has already received budget proposals from all the departments. The finance department submitted them to Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao for approval.
He asked officials to study Union Budget thoroughly and come out with revised proposals based on how much funds the state could garner from various Central schemes.
The CM said irrigation projects and the sop of Rs 8,000 per acre for farmers would take away a chunk of funds in State Budget this year and securing more funds from the Centre should be the priority to mobilise funds for state programmes.
The CM hinted that in the ‘election year’, the state government’s top priority was completing irrigation projects and providing Rs 8,000 per acre per year subsidy to farmers.
The irrigation departm-ent had sought Rs 40,000 cr-ore in the new Budget to complete ongoing projec-ts, while the agriculture department sought nearly Rs 11,000 crore to fund the subsidy programme.
The TS government is spending over Rs 40,000 crore on welfare schemes and in this backdrop the government needed to explore options of deriving maximum funds from the Centre’s Budget to fund welfare schemes.
“Most of the welfare schemes being implemented by TS government can be linked with Central schemes. Some implementation guidelines need to be changed to garner more funds from the Centre. The CM is also expecting the Centre to come out with more sops in the Union Budget being the last full-fledged budget of NDA government ahead of the general elections in 2019,” said official sources in the finance department.
With the CM’s fresh directives, the budget exercise in state would come to a temporary halt till the Union Budget is out on February 1. The CM wanted to hold department-wise meetings with secretaries of to finalise the State Budget.
Mr Rao has planned to convene the Budget session of the Legislature from March 12 and present the Budget on March 15.
