Former Finance Minister P Chidambaram said the Centre's promise to give a ‘letter of comfort’ to the States to borrow money to bridge the GST Compensation is just a word of comfort on a piece of paper that has no value.

What States need is hard cash, Chidambaram said. “Only the Central government has multiple options and the flexibility to raise the resources and pay the shortfall in GST compensation to the States. If the States are forced to borrow, the axe will inevitably fall on capital expenditure by the States which has already suffered a cut,” he said on Thursday in Twitter.

Meanwhile, Kerala Finance Minister and senior CPI (M) leader Thomas Isaac welcomed the stance of the Centre that it was never its idea to deny full GST compensation. “Glad to be corrected. But deferring half the compensation for better times,ipso facto, is deferring public expenditures to better times. It is the surest way of deferring future good days,” Isaac tweeted.

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