‘No debt trap’: Kerala counters RBI report

Asserting that Kerala is not in a debt trap, finance minister K N Balagopal on Sunday said the RBI article that expressed concerns over the state’s financial health was done without studying the ground realities.
Balagopal said those who prepared the report did not take into account the difficulties faced by his state due to outbreak of Covid-19 and Nipah and natural calamities like floods in 2018 and 2019.
Referring to the RBI paper which said Kerala, along with two other states, is projected to exceed the debt-GSDP ratio of 35% by 2026-27, he pointed out that the Centre’s debt-GDP rate was much more than that.