The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : It will be a development budget, says Rosaiah Speech may focus on TDP's `mistakes'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 23, 2004

Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

It will be a development budget, says Rosaiah Speech may focus on TDP's `mistakes'

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, JUNE 22. A critical review of the management of the State's finances by the Telugu Desam Government is likely to be a key feature of the budget speech of the Finance Minister, K. Rosaiah, in the Assembly on Wednesday.

This official critique will be a kind of substitute for a white paper on the State's finances which many expected the Rajasekhara Reddy Government to publish after assuming office. It is intended to vindicate criticism by the Congress and Left parties that the TDP Government had excessively increased non-plan expenditure, allowed fiscal deficit to mount and resorted to heavy borrowings.

When Mr. Rosaiah rises at 10.45 a.m. to present the budget, a question that will be uppermost in the minds of legislators is how he will mobilise resources for the numerous new programmes proposed by the Government and the subsidies to farmers and other sections that it has announced during the past five weeks.

The Finance Minister told The Hindu that Government proposed to step up collections and cut down wasteful expenditure. The Chief Minister had already held several rounds of discussions with revenue-earning departments. Apart from this routine response, the Government was already talking to national and international financial institutions to give funds at low interest rates.

These interactions were fruitful as several institutions had expressed willingness to provide assistance. In fact, some of the foreign institutions, which were looking for new areas of investment, were virtually lining up for providing assistance. He said another means for raising funds was to swap loans bearing high interest rates with those carrying lower interest rates. Further, he had requested the Union Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, to raise the ceiling on borrowings by the State.

Sounding a note of caution to people not to expect miracles in the budget, he said there was little elbow room for the new Government to innovate since it would have to endorse the vote-on-account budget presented by the TDP Government and frame the budget for remaining eight months for the 2004-05 fiscal.

However, the budget would reflect the Congress Government's priorities in irrigation, agriculture, education, health, welfare, power and infrastructure development. It would mainly be a development-oriented budget with a strong emphasis on ushering in fiscal discipline, he added.

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