Telangana to lose borrowing facility once again

Hyderabad: Branding the Union Budget as a 'Jumla Budget', which failed to address issues of the farmers, farm labourers, youth and unemployed, the KCR government said it would once again lose the borrowing facility to the extent of Rs 6000 crore in the new financial year.

The reason was that the Centre had stated again that the policy of extending FRBM limit to 3.5 percent would be applicable only to those states which had adopted power reforms.

It may be recalled that the state government opposed these reforms. The government feels that this measure was nothing but imposing economic sanctions on the state in the guise of power reforms. It had announced that it would not accept installation of smart meters to agriculture pumpsets.

Officials of the state Finance department said that the state had to bear the brunt of the economic sanctions, including the borrowings by the state corporations in the current financial year.

The state could not mobilize the projected Rs 30,000 crore through the financial institutions. The state government will have to find alternative ways and means to achieve its targets since the Centre was adopting step-motherly treatment, Finance Minister T Harish Rao and other felt.

The government which is implementing a slew of welfare schemes requires more than Rs 70,000 crore to implement them. "Without borrowings, the state will not progress as the economy is closely linked to mobilisation of financial resources through various channels", a senior official said.