Nagpur: State finance minister
Sudhir Mugantiwar on Wednesday defended the economic health of Maharashtra and accused opposition leaders Ajit Pawar, Prithviraj Chavan and Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil of sending false alarms through their assertions that the state was fast hurtling to bankruptcy.
He was replying to the opposition-sponsored resolution deprecating the Devendra Fadnavis government on economic parameters.
“If senior political leaders like you keep harping on external borrowings of the state mounting to about Rs5 lakh crore, it could send a wrong signal to the investment community. The truth is that the state was within its borrowing limits set by Niti Aayog. Actually, the earlier government had touched the borrowings’ 25% upper limit of revenue receipts. We are now at 16% since the revenue generation has also also scaled up,” said Mungantiwar, adding, “It is all in control.”
On petrol and diesel prices going skyhigh and increasing inflation, Mungantiwar denied the state had anything to do with it. Turning the tables on the Congress, he said it was the Manmohan Singh government which gave pricing powers to oil marketing companies which is being followed.
“In 2015, we levied 2% cess to meet drought expenditure, but it was withdrawn in a few months. The state is also not against bringing petrol, diesel prices under GST ambit,” Mungantiwar said.
“The GST Council at the Centre approves all rates and it has representation from every state. So, Congress-ruled states also have a say and all decisions at GST Council are unanimous,” said the minister blowing apart the opposition charge that the state was suffering huge losses after GST rollout started a year ago.
On employment scene, the minister said the government was doing its best to reduce the 2.1% rate. “It’s true that some political leaders have become jobless since 2014, but otherwise the situation is not alarming,” he said, adding that the industrial and agriculture growth was on the right track and not in negative territory as the opposition leaders claimed.
