KCR to ask Centre for increase in borrowing limit of state government
Hyderabad: Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, who is currently in Delhi, is expected to bring pressure on the Central government on two important issues.
He will ask the Centre to release Rs 450 crore under the backward areas development scheme for the current financial year, and secondly, try to get the borrowing limit of the state government increased to 3.5 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product from 3 per cent.
Rao directed finance officials to come to Delhi prepared with notes on these two issues and they accordingly rushed to Delhi on Tuesday evening.
According to the AP Reorganisation Act, the Centre will release about Rs 450 crore to nine districts at the rate of Rs 50 crore to each. In the last two years, the Centre released Rs 900 crore.
The state government wrote to the Union finance ministry to release Rs 450 crore for the current financial year under the backward areas development scheme.
The Centre made it clear that it will release the funds only after it gets utilisation certificates for the Rs 900 crore already released.
Accordingly, the state government sent the utilisation certificates for Rs 900 crore. But NITI-Aayog said that the utilisation certificates were not in the proper format and sought more details and a fresh report.
The Chief Minister is likely to meet Union finance minister Arun Jaitley and seek the immediate release of the funds. As far as the second issue is concerned, the state government has sent required details and asked for the borrowing limit to be increased to 3.55 per cent from 3 per cent of GSDP for the current financial year. But the Centre has expressed some doubts about the GSDP figures sent by the state government.
The Union ministry of statistics and programme implementation said that significant entries were missing in the data sent by the TS government, and asked for more details before it fixes the market borrowing limit for the current financial year.
The 14th Finance Commission has recommended that revenue surplus states can be allowed to borrow 3.5 per cent of GSDP and it is on this ground that the state government is demanding the increase in the borrowing limit to 3.5 per cent.
