The Central government has approved capital projects of ₹179 crore for Telangana in addition to the projects of similar amount that were cleared for the State earlier.
Additional projects were approved for the State as an incentive for undertaking reforms in three out of four stipulated citizen-centric areas, One Nation One Ration Card, Ease of Doing Business and Urban Local Bodies’ reforms. The fourth area is power sector reforms, said a press release.
The approval was given under the newly-launched scheme of ‘financial assistance to States for capital projects’. With this, Telangana became the second State to get additional funds under the scheme. Earlier, Madhya Pradesh was sanctioned additional capital projects worth ₹660 crore as an incentive to undertake reforms in three out of four stipulated areas.
Out of the additional approved amount of ₹179 crore, a sum of ₹89.50 crore has been released to the State as first instalment. All the capital projects identified by government for taking up from additional funds are in the roads’ sector.
The scheme of ‘special assistance to States for capital expenditure’ was announced by Union Finance Minister on October 12 last year as part of Aatmanirbhar Bharat package. It was aimed at boosting capital expenditure by State governments facing difficult financial environment due to the shortfall in tax revenue arising from the COVID pandemic.
The scheme received good response from State governments as capital expenditure proposals of ₹10,835.50 crore of 27 States were approved by Finance Ministry. A sum of ₹5,417.70 crore was already released to the States as first instalment under the scheme. Tamil Nadu did not avail the benefit.
The capital expenditure projects were approved in diverse sectors of the economy like health, rural development, water supply, roads and bridges, irrigation, power, transport, education and urban development.
The scheme had three parts. Part I covered the north-eastern and hill States, Part II was for all other States not included in Part I and Part III at pushing various citizen centric reforms in States. The last amount was available only to those States which carried out by February 15, 2021, at least three out of four reforms specified by the Finance Ministry.
