Hyderabad: The state government's overall debt burden would increase to Rs 2.86 lakh crore as per Budget 2021-22 tabled in the Assembly on Thursday. Of this, open market loans account for Rs 2.44 lakh crore.
The budget proposes to raise Rs 47,500 crore through market borrowing against Rs 43,784 crore last year. The government needs to pay Rs 17,584 crore this year towards interest while it was Rs 14,615 crore last year.
The expenditure on payment of interest has been increasing. It was Rs 14,385 crore in 2019-20 and Rs 14,615 crore in 2020-21. However, the debt is within the permissible limit of 25 per cent of GSDP, at 24.84 per cent.
But the state government has breached the limit in 2020-21 due to the pandemic-induced financial crisis. The Centre allowed all states to borrow more to tide over from the crisis.
As per the revised estimates for 2020-21, the overall debt was Rs 2,45,282 crore, slightly more than the 25 per cent cap at 25.07 per cent.
The debt burden of state government has been consistently increasing. In 2018-19, it stood at Rs1,75,281 crore, which increased to Rs 2,05,858.33 crore in 2019-20. It further increased to Rs 2,45,282 crore in 2020-21 and Thursday’s Budget pegs the overall debt at Rs 2,86,804 crore.
This apart, the government proposes to borrow Rs 32,561 crore through various corporations by giving bank guarantees. Of this, Rs 14,562 crore will be raised for irrigation projects, Rs 12,503 crore for Mission Bhagiratha and Rs 5,495 crore to meet financial needs.
Though the government is presenting ‘revenue-surplus’ budgets since the formation of the state in 2014, it has faced a revenue deficit for in 2019-20 (Rs 6,254 crore) and 2020-21 (Rs16,226 crore). Despite this, the government on Thursday came out with a Rs 6,743 crore revenue surplus budget for 2021-22.
