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With the slowdown impacting the State economy, the Telangana government has pared the State Budget to ₹1,46,492 crore for the financial year 2019-20 and asked the departments to be prudent in spendings.
While presenting the vote-on-account budget in February this year, Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao had pegged the total expenditure in 2019-20 at ₹1,82,017 crore, which included a revenue expenditure of ₹1,31,629 crore.
Expenditures
In the ₹1,46,492-crore Budget, revenue expenditure is estimated at ₹1,11,056 crore and capital expenditure at ₹17,275 crore. It pegged the revenue surplus at ₹2,044 crore and the fiscal deficit at ₹24,082 crore.
Rao, who presented the full Budget for 2019-20 in the Assembly on Monday, said the economic slowdown had resulted in a slide in the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at the national level in the last five quarters with a cascading impact on the State’s economy.
“The severe economic slowdown is leading to serious repercussions in the country, which we are witnessing daily. It has adversely impacted all the sectors. There is a decline in many key sectors,” he said.
He said the growth rate in the GDP has begun to slide from the first quarter of 2018-19. The growth rate fell to 7 per cent in the second quarter from 8 per cent, 6.6 per cent in the third and to 5.8 per cent in the last quarter. It further fell to 5 per cent in the first quarter of 2019-20. This has impacted the entire country,” he added.
Fall in GST
Revenue collections, particularly Goods and Services Tax collections, have plunged, forcing the State to take compensation of ₹700 crore in the June quarter and ₹175 crore in the April quarter this financial year.
The State is in for either stagnant or lower receipts from tax collections this year. The budget estimates have pegged lower receipts from taxes on sales and trade at ₹21,972 crore this year as against ₹22,138 crore in 2018-19. The Excise receipts would be about ₹10,901 crore as agaisnt ₹10,313 crore in the previous year. With the automobile sector bleeding, the State expects lower taxes on vehicles of ₹3,714 crore (₹4,024 crore) this year.
“We expected a growth rate of 15 per cent in revenues for the current year. But we registered only 5.46 per cent in the first four months of this year. The growth rate in Excise Collections in the first quarter is only 2.59 per cent. Taxes from the sale of Motor Vehicles registered a decline of 2.6 per cent as against an average of 19 per cent growth rate in the last five years,” Rao said.
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