PUDUCHERRY:Former Lok Sabha member and economist M Ramadass has urged the Lieutenant Governor to enact the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act (FRBMA) to tide over the financial strain faced by Puduchetty and prevent it from falling into a debt trap.
Recalling Lt Governor A K Singh’s interaction with President Pranab Mukherjee through video conferencing on January 10 where the former apprised him of the crisis, Ramadass said the government should also think in terms of introducing a fiscal roadmap for the year 2015-2016 and implement it seriously. Further, he said it should set up a fiscal road map commission to monitor the changing fiscal developments and suggest corrective measures.
What emerged as a minor problem of plan financing in 2007 through the opening of a separate public account has snowballed into a leviathan financial crisis which manifests in many forms today.
The only way to retrieve the situation is to declare financial emergency and impose strict fiscal discipline on all financial managers of the UT including the Finance Minister. They should be required to organise their fiscal operations on the basis of certain stipulated fiscal principles, legislative laws so as to ensure fiscal discipline and fiscal consolidation.
This can be accomplished only by enacting FRBMA. In case FRBMA is not feasible since it is a Union Territory the government should seriously outline the fiscal roadmap in the Budget for 2015-16 and implement it from this year onwards, he said.