The Hindu Business Line : Maharashtra pinning hopes on doles from Centre

If only the State had time for some consultations, the Centre's mind would have been known. Now, the budget "has to be done in anticipation" and the NCP-Congress being in the Government at the Centre and the State "may make a difference."

Mumbai , May 26

MAHARASHTRA'S Finance Minister, Mr Jayant Patil, has his job cut out for him as he prepares his last Budget of a five-year term: he does not know how many of the demands the State has made over the years would now be met by the new United Progressive Alliance Government at the Centre in quick time.

But he clearly needs help from the Centre. The State has been plagued by deficits and funds constraints and is caught in a debt trap. He would, therefore, be finalising the State's Budget, to be presented on Thursday, his widely expected populism would have to be fuelled by the anticipation that the Congress-led Government in New Delhi would be kinder to Maharashtra than the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance was.

Mr Patil had said several times in the past that, "Maharashtra got a raw deal," be it for drought relief or help in restructuring its public debt. But there is one thing he has to worry about. Would what had been conveyed to the Centre in the past over a long spell of four-and-half years when the BJP-led NDA ruled Delhi, stand in good stead for him now with the new government in place to go ahead and work out a fairly popular budget, given the fact that in September Maharashtra goes for polls to the Assembly.

The unfortunate thing, according to the Finance Ministry here, is that the State is preparing a budget without actually knowing what the Centre would do by way of a leg up in this crucial year, just months before the State polls. If only the State had time for some consultations, the Centre's mind would have been known. Now, "it has to be done in anticipation" and the NCP-Congress being in the Government at the Centre and the State "may make a difference."

Mr Patil, considered a `brave man to have accepted the finance portfolio in 1999 when there were no takers' because the exchequer handed over to him by the previous regime of Shiv Sena-BJP was in the red, has seen the debts growing and the Centre unhelpful.

In 1999, the debt 20.65 per cent of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) and 198 per cent of the revenue.

Now, he is faced with the task of not only dealing with a debt estimated for the current fiscal at 275 per cent of the revenue and 32.65 per cent of the GSDP but trying to persuade the Centre that its pending, three-year-old proposal Rs 10,000-crore request for a debt-restructuring loan be forwarded by the Centre to the World Bank.

Of late, Mr Patil had been conceding that the debt has grown but so have the revenue receipts; if that were not the case, "Maharashtra would have been in worse circumstances," a Finance Ministry source said.