A paradoxical situation is prevailing in the State of Telangana. It continues to be among the top grosser of Goods and Services Tax in the country, yet complaints are mounting over non-payment of bills pending for the past several months.
For instance, the State earned a revenue of ₹4,082 crore under SGST till July in the current fiscal of 2019 -20 over that of ₹3,470 crore in the corresponding period last year - registering a growth of 17.63%.
IGST
Even the Integrated Goods and Services Tax (IGST) that is levied on all inter-State supplies of goods and services will be shared between the Central and the State government. The Centre would release the IGST due to the State every month and sometimes it would be bunched and released. Under IGST settlement, the State got ₹3,838 crore till July this year as against ₹3,465 crore in the corresponding period from April to July of last financial year 2018-19.
However, sources admit that in view of commitments to the flagship projects and programmes, the government was unable to spread its resources evenly across all the sectors. The lion’s share in release of funds has been going to the irrigation sector and specially the Kaleshwaram Lift Irrigation Project. Sources said that work amounting to thousands of crores were sanctioned at one go. For instance ₹2000 crore work was allotted in the combined State for Telangana region under the R&B a year while R&B work worth ₹15,000 crore was sanctioned in 2014 alone. Hence the financial crunch, sources said.
Some contractors who executed the infrastructure works and waited for months for payments while paying interest on the amount they borrowed to complete the work went to court and got part of their payments released.
Not fair, says contractor
“It is not fair to favour some contractors and neglect the others. A leader should not concentrate only on one sector to the detriment of other sectors,” a contractor waiting for his payments said.
There are others who said that they did not suffer even when the GST was implemented as a tax reform.
‘No empathy’
“We supported the reform and cooperated as it would benefit the State and Central governments to streamline tax collection and curb evasion. Yet, the State government is not showing empathy to the plight of several small and medium contractors who executed the work more than an year ago but are still awaiting the payments,” a member of Builders Association of India, Telangana State Chapter, said.
Even in irrigation sector,there are some medium and minor irrigation projects that were not completed for the last 15 to 20 years. All they required was about ₹2,000 crore to complete them.
For instance, farmers in Nalgonda are believed to have said that they would forego their Rythu Bandhu amounts which comes to ₹1,300 crore a year in two phases if the government completes these projects that would benefit the farmers much more.