Hyderabad: The Telangana state Cabinet on Sunday reportedly decided to present a more realistic Budget for 2016-17, instead of going in for jumbo exercises like in the past.
The Cabinet at its meeting of more than two hours took serious note of the discouraging financial condition and the failure to meet earnings targets.
According to sources, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao told the Cabinet that the government’s expectations of earning huge revenues through the sale of government land, as also the land and building regularisation schemes besides grants from the Centre did not materialise.
Telangana looks to borrow more
While the government was planning to present a Budget in the range of Rs 1.40 lakh crore, against Rs 1.15 lakh crore last year, Mr Rao is said to have indicated that it would be better to restrict it to Rs 1.10 lakh crore. The government fell short of meeting the Rs 1 lakh crore mark against the Rs 1.15 lakh crore size of the 2015-16 Budget.
The Cabinet decided to explore more borrowing options from funding agencies to take up irrigation projects, Mission Bhageeratha and 2BHK houses. Another major poll promise, the KG-to-PG free education, would also not get major allocations this time as well. There was no media briefing about Cabinet decisions as the notification for the Assembly session has already been issued.
Sources said the Cabinet approved Bills for setting up private universities, a women’s university in the government sector and borrowing more from Nabard and Hudco for the government’s programmes redesigning of irrigation projects and MoUs with Maharashtra to complete pending irrigation projects. The Cabinet is learnt to have approved March 14 as the date to present the Budget.
