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As officials of the new State are gathering estimates and receipts from different departments for the Budget, which may be presented before the Assembly sometime this month or early August, it appears that the new State may start off with a small revenue surplus. The size of the maiden budget of new Telangana State is likely to be pegged at ₹70,000 crore.
A senior official in the Telangana Government said as things stood at present, the Plan size would be in the neighbourhood of ₹20,000 crore, while the Non-Plan component could be ₹50,000 crore. “We are yet to get a final clarity on the figures and there could be small changes later. But this is how the Budget would look like,” he told Business Line on condition of anonymity.
Although there could be some fiscal deficit at around 1.5 per cent, the State could have a revenue surplus. “We are yet to get the full receipts for May, but the revenue surplus in the first Budget would be in the range of ₹2,000 and ₹3,000 crore,” he said.
Priority areasFollowing the broad directions set by the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhara Rao, there would be some reorganisation of priority areas.
The three areas: SC welfare, residential schools from KG to PG, and new housing schemes (involving a budget of ₹3 lakh per family) would be brought upwards in the priority list.
A team of senior officials is meeting the RBI’s Governor in Mumbai on Friday to seek re-scheduling of loans in the run-up to the waiver.
One of the challenges faced in the budget preparation is providing for the expenditure on the promised loan-waiver on which there is no clarity yet.
Telangana is better off than its neighbour on this front as the burden on its waiver scheme would be a relatively smaller sum of about ₹17,000 crore, following some filtering of the beneficiaries list. This is estimated to cover some 40 lakh farmers.
“Although the burden is lower, it is impossible to make room for it within our Plan and Non-Plan estimates. A clearer picture will emerge after our meeting with RBI tomorrow,” the official said.
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