Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao has asked the Centre to release all the pending funds to the State.

He has also directed the Finance Department to reduce the allocation of funds to all the ministries in view of the shortfall in the State’s share of Central taxes during the present financial year and pending GST dues from the Centre.

He also has written to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitaraman to release the State’s share of Central taxes as announced in the Union Budget or state the factual position of the economy.

In this regard, Rao is also planning to meet the Prime Minister and Union Finance Minister in the next week.

As per the contents of the letter sent to the Union Finance Minister, State government has so far received only ₹10,304 crore towards its share in the Central taxes in the last eight months of the current financial year. This is less than the ₹10,528 crore devolved to the State in the corresponding period of the previous fiscal year 2018-19.

The Centre in its Union Budget assured that it would release ₹19,719 crore towards the State’s share in the Central taxes for 2019-20, an increase of 6.2 per cent over ₹16,451 crore received by the State during the last financial year.

But the devolution to the State so far this year was less by 2.13 per cent than what was released in the corresponding period last year . There was a shortfall of ₹924 crore to the State from its share of Central taxes.

Because of the economic slowdown, there was a shortfall in GST collections compared to the benchmark growth of 14 per cent and ₹1,719 crore was due as compensation as mandated under the GST Act. Under the IGST settlement, Centre owed ₹2,812 crore for the year 2017-18. Thus total ₹4,531 crore of GST funds were due to the State.

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