HYDERABAD: “There is nothing for Telangana in the Union budget. It is very disappointing.” This is the initial reaction of State Finance Department officials after Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Budget on Friday. “There is no new project for the State,” one senior official said.“It is very unfortunate that the Centre took no initiative to help Telangana,” felt Agriculture Minister Singireddy Niranjan Reddy.
Though the Central government planned to provide drinking water to every house, it allocated only Rs 10,000 crore for this and extended the scheme to just 230 districts in the country. “Under Mission Bhagiratha alone, the State government has spent up to Rs 40,000 crore and provided water to every household. The Centre’s meagre allocation of Rs 10,000 crore is insufficient,” an official pointed out.
Meanwhile, the finance minister, in her speech, said the investment allowance and higher additional depreciation was provided for undertakings in backward regions of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana and West Bengal. However, this was nothing new as it has already been mentioned in the AP Reorganisation Act, 2014. “The State government sought more sops to attract investments to the backward districts, but no such specific assurance was given. There is no clarity on whether the finance minister’s latest announcement is better than the assurance in the APRA, 2014,” official sources said.
The fiscal policy strategy statement had stated that the threshold of aggregate turnover for exemption from registration and payment of GST for goods-suppliers was Rs 40 lakh and Rs 20 lakh (in Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Puducherry, Sikkim, Telangana, Tripura and Uttarakhand) from April 1, 2019. “This threshold was earlier opposed by Telangana and it was not implemented along with the other States. Now, it is included in the Budget,” an official in the Commercial Taxes department told Express.
The fiscal policy strategy also mentioned that the Fertiliser Corporation of India Limited (FCIL) plant in Ramagundam is being revived by a JV called Ramagundam Fertilizers and Chemicals Limited (RFCL). RFCL is likely to begin production this year. This would reduce the dependence on import of urea in the coming years. The Union budget mentioned that 12 States, including Telangana, voluntarily surrendered their PDS kerosene allocations under the DBTK scheme.
The Output Outcome Framework 2019 mentioned that the security and administrative infrastructure at SVP NPA would be increased in 2019-20.
For the expansion of the Sardar Vallabhai Patel National Police Academy here, 400 acres of land has to be acquired. Of this, 42 acres will be handed over to the academy this year. Later, 20 acres more will be acquired.