HYDERABAD: MIM Floor leader in the state Assembly Akbaruddin Owaisi on Saturday suggested to chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao to rethink on the proposal of constructing new buildings for State Assembly, Secretariat and others.
‘’When we have two sprawling Assembly buildings both for Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and spacious Secretariat, where is the need to have another buildings for Assembly and Secretariat?’’ Akbaruddin asked.
“It is a sheer waste of public money, instead the same amount can be utilised for implementing welfare schemes for poor and weaker sections’’ he said.
Participating in the debate on budget for 2016-17 in the Assembly, Akbaruddin said that separate buildings for Assembly and Secretariat is not the need of the hour. ‘’What poor people want is two bedroom houses and drinking water,’’ he said.
‘’Like his predecessors, finance minister Etela Rajender presented a maze of documents on the state Budget and one need to take a deeper look at each document to piece together the macro and micro-picture of the status of state finances,’’ he said.
There has been a huge shortfall in state resource mobilisation (through state tax and non-tax revenues) compared to the higher estimates made in the successive budgets since 2014-15.
The trends over the last two financial years clearly show that state tax revenues are not growing as anticipated by the government. Both during 2014-15 and 2015-16, collections of state taxes such as commercial taxes, motor vehicle taxes, stamps and registration fees etc have failed to hit the targets.
Only state excise revenues are growing with soaring liquor sales. Non-tax revenues, including mining revenues, are not growing at the anticipated levels.
He said that anticipated revenues from land regularisation and sale of government lands have not been realised in the last two years.
In 2014-15, Rajender projected revenues of `6,500 crore but actual receipts was a paltry `9 crore. The minister has projected to raise `10,900 crore from land regularisation and auctions of lands in 2016-17, Akbaruddin said.
The State’s public debt would reach ` 1,00,708 crore by March 2016 as per revised estimates. By March 2017, state public debt would soar to `1,23,821 crore or 18.46 percent of the estimated GSDP. The public debt, thus, would grow by `51,406 crore in the three financial years since the formation of Telangana.
He said the finance minister has come up with state budget of `1,30,416 crore, including non-plan allocations of `62,785 crore and plan outlay of `67,631 crore for 2016-17. The state budget size for 2016-17 is almost double the actual expenditure incurred in 2014-15.
‘’I am afraid that the state’s financial resource position is not very conducive to facilitate such a massive step-up in the plan and non-plan expenditure in the ensuing financial year,’’ he added.
He sought to know whether the state government has forwarded its loan application to BRICS Bank through Central government, state government is seeking loans of `77,533 crore from BRICS Bank for funding mega projects for Hyderabad, including roads, drinking water, storm water drains, sanitation, skyways over Musi and Hussainsagar clean-up, growth corridors along Outer Ring Road, infrastructure facilities, restoration of lakes and tap connections to all households.