HYDERABAD: With folded hands, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday requested Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao not to crack any jokes about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal to make India a $5 trillion economy.
While addressing a session on the Union Budget in Hyderabad, Sitharaman said the chief minister should clear the State’s debts, which increased from Rs 60,000 crore in 2014 to Rs 3 lakh crore, before cracking such jokes. Since he is the elected head of the State government, he should keep his position in mind and speak responsibly, she added.
Later, Sitharaman brought up the issue of the sanction of medical colleges in the State. “Before the setting up of medical colleges across the country, the Centre had asked the Telangana government to send the names of districts which don’t have any medical colleges. In response, the State proposed Karimnagar and Khammam, which already have such institutions. The State government, itself, doesn’t have proper data about medical colleges but is complaining that the Centre is not sanctioning medical or nursing colleges in Telangana,” she said.
Sitharaman informed that the grants-in-aid from the Centre to the State government since 2014 has been Rs 1.39 lakh crore. “With regards to railway infrastructure, the Centre has allotted Rs 4,418 crore in the 2023-24 Budget, while in 2022-23 Budget, Rs 3,048 crore was allotted. A Centre of Excellence will also be developed at the Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Hyderabad,” she mentioned.
The minister also announced a one-time new small savings scheme, Mahila Samman Savings Certificate. Under the initiative, people can deposit upto Rs 2 lakh in the name of women or girls for two years at a fixed interest rate of 7.5 per cent with a partial withdrawal option, she added.
Earlier, Sitharaman participated in post budgetary session with trade, industry and commerce stakeholders. At the event, she said that revamped credit guarantee scheme for MSMEs, proposed in the previous Budget, will take effect from April 1 through an infusion of Rs 9,000 crore in the corpus, which will enable additional collateral-free guaranteed credit of Rs 2 lakh crore.