Comments
The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, N Chandrababu Naidu, today admitted that the State finances were under severe pressure forcing the Government to cut down on expenditure.
Addressing a press conference, the Chief Minister said he has been pursuing with the Centre the need to provide financial assistance to the newly-created residual State and accord special status announced during the AP Reorganisation Act.
“The State has been bifurcated resulting in big financial loss to Andhra Pradesh and gain to Telangana. We started with a revenue deficit of Rs 15,500 crore and this has gone up (now at about Rs 20,000 crore). AP has huge development agenda and less financial resources; therefore, the Centre needs to extend all necessary financial support assured during bifurcation,” he said.
Referring to the growing stress on the State finances, where the fund requirement is going up, but there is no commensurate growth in revenues, he said Andhra Pradesh was forced to cut down on expenditure.
“We are working with the Centre for grant of special status for the State. I have personally met with the Prime Minister and Finance Minister and visited Delhi several times to impress upon the Centre to provide finances. Once the economy gets back to growth path, the Centre would be able to extend necessary support,” Chandrababu Naidu said.
“Grant of special status entitles us to access 90 per cent of support as grant and 10 per cent could be met by the State. Therefore, this is crucial for development works, including building a Capital and Polavaram project,” he said.
“That the State finances would be in a bad shape was evident from the time of bifurcation and the way the state was divided. However, we are banking on the new Government and the new Finance Commission to provide necessary funding to AP,” he said.
Referring to the bad financial health of the State, which his Government inherited from the previous Congress regime, the Chief Minister said even the dues of Rs 1,200 crore to industries as subsidies have not been paid for years.
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.