Chennai: The Edappadi K. Palaniswami government on Thursday presented its maiden budget in the assembly where a reference to All India Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) general secretary V.K. Sasikala by finance minister D. Jayakumar invited strong protests from the opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).
The government presented the budget exactly a month after the chief minister’s swearing-in.
DMK, which demanded that the remarks be expunged, also tried to raise the issue of a no confidence motion proposed by it against Speaker P. Dhanapal. But the Speaker said he would stick to the day’s agenda of presentation of the budget and possibly take up the matter later during this session, PTI reported.
According to the revised budget 2016-2017, the outstanding debt-to-GSDP ratio is expected to be at 18.43% of the GSDP.
O. Panneerselvam, who was finance minister under former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa, had estimated the fiscal deficit for 2016-17 at Rs40,533.84 crore, when the Tamil Nadu government presented its budget in July last year after the assembly election.
“The overall outstanding borrowings of the state has been estimated to be Rs2,52,431 crore at the end of this financial year,” Panneerselvam had said.
The revenue deficit for the 2016-17 financial year is estimated to be Rs15,854.47 crore, the revenue expenditure would be Rs1,64,029.56 crore.
Last week, DMK MLA Palanivel Thiagarajan, an investment banker-turned-politician, released a report “Drowning in debt: And the worst is yet to come” and highlighted the deterioration in the state’s finances over the last seven years.
The DMK claims that Tamil Nadu’s debt would increase by Rs47,000 crore in this fiscal year.
The first six months of 2016-17 saw a deficit of Rs13,804 crore, which is 87% of the budget for the whole year. The deficit is expected to have worsened during the second half of the financial year (October 2016 to March 2017) since the hospitalisation of Jayalalithaa on 22 September.
Following Jayalalithaa’s demise, a lot of changes have taken place politically. Then there were issues like demonetisation, drought, cyclone Vardah, Jallikattu protests and Ennore oil spill.
There has been a drop in capital investments, with only 21% of the budgeted Rs24,679 crore utilized in the first half of the financial year and Rs5,166 crore used for investments, claimed the report by DMK.
The report added that the state had missed capital investments targets during the last two years, contrary to its projections mentioned in “Vision 2023”—AIADMK’s document on economic planning. The DMK accused the AIADMK of taking the state’s debt from Rs1.05 trillion to Rs2.18 trillion in five years, “especially during the last two years when, Rs62,000 crore (53%) debt had been incurred”, the report said.
PTI contributed to this report
