‘Division inflicted hardships on AP’

UPA carried out division of the State unilaterally

Hyderabad: The Andhra Pradesh Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu on Wednesday lashed out at the previous Congress led UPA-II government at the centre.

During his one-and-a-half hours first budget speech in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, Ramakrishnudu said, the provisions of AP Reorganisation Act 2014 for the development Andhra Pradesh was an exercise in tokenism. He said the division of State had left Andhra Pradesh with grossly inadequate social and critical infrastructure and thus affecting income generation resources, employment opportunities, health and educational institutions, R&D and training facilities.

Terming the way State division was carried as "epitome of irresponsibility," Ramakrishnudu said the residuary State of AP had turned into a hugely revenue deficit State. He termed the UPA government failing to incorporate provision for certain amount of fund for building new capital as “height of irresponsibility.”

The expenditure on account of debts, employees’ salaries and pensions amounted to 58 per cent but the revenue expected was only 47 per cent. But the AP Reorganisation Act did not provide provision to make up the deficit. The revenue from stamp duty and registration fee and motor vehicle tax was expected to be 55 per cent less than that of the united Andhra Pradesh.

Non-tax revenue from mining too is expected to be as low as 30 per cent of the united State. The overall revenue share of residuary State from the tax and non-tax was estimated to be around 47 per cent of the united AP, the Finance Minister said.

Budget proposes 7 missions to improve economic growth

Hyderabad: The first full-fledged budget of Andhra Pradesh State aims at developing the State as one among the three best performing states in the country by 2022, Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu said.

Presenting the budget, the Finance Minister said Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s pet vision 2020 document proposed during his earlier stint as the CM of united Andhra Pradesh had been re-drafted to frame a new vision that would set standard for a new development paradigm.

The budget proposal identified key obstacles in achieving the target by way of several interventions like improving coordination among various departments.

The Finance Minister added that to achieve this, the budget proposed seven missions. The missionary approach had result oriented framework with defined objectives, implementation timelines and measurable outcomes. The missions will have limited number of sub-missions. The proposed seven missions were: Primary Sector Mission, Social Empowerment Mission, Knowledge and Skill Development Mission, Urban Development Mission, Industry and Manufacturing Sector Mission, Infrastructure Mission and Service Sector Mission.

The seven-mission-approach is expected to take care of economic growth and infrastructure needs of the State. Each mission would have short, medium and long-term growth objectives, which would be planned to achieve by integrating them into annual plans, he informed.

He further added that Chief Minister would be the chairperson of these missions. Each of these missions as well as their overall outcomes would be based on pre-defined objectives, implementation structure, funding mechanism, required departmental synergy, functioning component and roll-out mechanism at district level. It would also have reporting, monitoring, evaluation system and to perform-based award mechanism.

Narayana presents budget in Council

Hyderabad: Andhra Pradesh Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister P Narayana on Wednesday presented the State budget for 2014-15 in the Legislative Council. Deputy Chief Minister KE Krishna Murthy, State Human Resource Development Minister Ganta Srinivas and other ministers of AP were present in the House during the presentation of the budget. All the members from treasury benches and opposition were also present.

Jagan terms budget as hotchpotch

Hyderabad: Opposition in the AP Assembly Y S Jaganmohan Reddy on Wednesday mounted a scathing attack on the TDP government's maiden budget, and termed it as hotchpotch.

Giving his reaction to the Budget presented by Finance Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu for the financial year 2014-15 in the Assembly, the YSRCP said it had shattered the people's dreams.

It had poured cold water on everybody's expectations and all the sections of people were deeply shocked. It left all those hoping for relief in the lurch.

Jagan said after the bifurcation, Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu had consistently assured the people that all agriculture and DWCRA loans would be waived, if he was voted to power. But there was no reference to the subjection in the budget.

There was nothing new in the budget and housing sector had been completely ignored by the TDP government, he pointed out.

During late YSR's rule, the housing sector had got Rs 7000 crore to Rs. 8000 crore every year.

This time only 800 crores had been allocated. The budget had not made any reference to capital city, too.

Pointing out that non-plan expenditure was three times more than plan expenditure and the capital expenditure too had come down, he said and added this led to the GDP being affected.