Hyderabad: Telangana Finance Minister T Harish Rao on Sunday presented the annual budget with the estimation of Rs 1, 82,914.42 crore, giving priority to agriculture and welfare.
Presenting the budget, Rao said: “It is not the budget for this financial year and also vision document for the next four years. We increased the funds for the welfare sector. It is a people-centric budget.”
Fulfilling the election promise, the government also decided to waive off farm loans in the budget. The budget allocates Rs 6,225 crore and the loan of under Rs 25,000 will be waived off immediately and remaining will be made in four instalments.
Giving priority to the agriculture sector, the budget proposed major allocations to it. While Rs 14,000 crore has been allotted to the Raitu Bandhu scheme, the government allocated Rs 1,141 crore to farmer insurance, Rs 1,000 crore to market intervention fund, Rs 600 crore to micro-irrigation, Rs 350 crore to farmer cluster establishment and Rs 100 crore to dairy development.
The government also proposed Rs 11,054 crore to irrigation sector to complete ongoing and pending projects.
The government has proposed Rs 40,000 crore for welfare schemes in the budget, which includes Kalyan Laxmi scheme, interest-free loan among others.
Keeping in mind the growing Hyderabad city, the state proposed Rs 10,000 crore for development of infrastructure and Musi River.
For the development of education, the government proposed Rs 2,650 crore as fee reimbursement.
It is proposed that Rs 10,421 crore will be spent on school education, Rs 1,723 crore on higher education, Rs 6,186 crore on health, Rs 10,416 crore on power, Rs 1,500 crore on industrial incentives among others.
The government also proposed Rs 500 crore for the development of temples in the state and Rs 50 crore for daily ‘deepa dhupa naivadyam’ in every temple in the state.
“Temples are centres of spirituality and ‘sanatana dharma’. The government is committed to bringing back the ancient grandeur to temples in Telangana. The government is renovating Yadadri shrine,” the FM said.
Harish Rao also said the government decided to sell the non-performing assets to raise revenue.
“Capital expenditure is the main pillar of stable development. As per the golden rule of economics, the loans which are being raised from different institutions are spent only for capital expenditure by the government,” he said.
Calling the budget realistic, the chief minister said it struck a balance between income, expenditure and needs of the people and expressed satisfaction over adequate allocations made in the Budget.
“Even though the country is going through an economic slowdown, decrease in the state revenues, and reduction in the funds from the Centre, the Budget was made not to hamper any development activity in the state, which is a congratulatory effort.”
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