Telangana presents Budget for 2022-23 with total expenditure of over Rs 2.56 lakh cr

Telangana Finance Minister T Harish Rao on Monday, March 7, presented a tax-free budget of Rs 2.56 lakh crore for 2022-23, up from about Rs 2.31 lakh crore last year. The budget proposed an outlay of Rs 17,700 crore for the state government's flagship Dalit welfare scheme Dalita Bandhu. “For the financial year 2022-23, I am proposing a total expenditure of Rs 2,56,958.51 crores. Out of this, revenue expenditure is Rs.1,89,274.82 crores and capital expenditure is Rs.29,728.44 crore,” the Minister said.

In FY 2021-22, the revenue expenditure and capital expenditure were Rs 1.69 lakh crore and Rs 29,046 crore respectively. During his speech, Harish Rao alleged discrimination against Telangana by the Union government, saying it was creating hurdles in the path of state's progress. He said Telangana is on a high growth trajectory.

As per the Advance Estimates, Telangana continued to maintain higher growth in the GSDP in 2021-22 too at 11.2% at constant prices as compared with the national GDP growth of 8.9%, he said. At current prices, GSDP growth is estimated at 19.1% as compared with the estimated GDP growth of 19.4%. Thus, Telangana recovered much faster in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, he pointed out.

By 2021-22, the per capita income of the state at Rs 2,78,833 exceeded the national average of Rs.1,49,848 by 1.86 times, said Harish Rao, a nephew of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. Highlighting the state government's primacy to welfare, he said the government's policy, as articulated by the Chief Minister, has been that mere growth has no meaning and even legitimacy if the poor are denied its benefits. In people's welfare, Telangana stands first in the country, he said.

Agriculture has been allocated Rs 24,254 crore in the budget. Loans of farmers upto Rs 50,000 would be waived by the end of March this year. Further, during the next financial year, loans up to Rs 75,000 would be waived. The state government allotted Rs 11,728 crore for ‘Aasara' (social security pensions).

Claiming that the police department has been successful in preventing communal clashes in the state, Harish Rao said that an amount of Rs 9315 crores is proposed for the Home Department. 

Claiming that the state government's two-bedroom housing scheme is a role model for the rest of the country, the budget proposed an allocation of Rs 12,000 crore for the programme. The budget also made an allocation of Rs 12,565 crore for the welfare of ST community.

All the districts of the state will soon have government medical colleges, which would be established over the next two years, the Finance Minister said. He also said the state's new Secretariat, which is under construction, would be completed in the current year.

Observing that the state government has announced Telangana electric vehicles policy recently, he said investments worth Rs 10,000 crore have already come to the state. It is expected that these investments would result in the creation of about 29,000 jobs, he said. 

Even though many sectors were adversely affected due to COVID-19, the IT exports from Telangana clocked a growth of 12.98%. The total exports from Telangana IT sector were valued at Rs 1,45,522 crores in 2021, he said. (PTI)