Bifurcation bolsters TS, AP

Eatala interview

• Practical budget on the cards
• Over `25k crore for irrigation
• Big boost for healthcare

Hyderabad: Contrary to the arguments of those who opposed bifurcation, finances of both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have gone up after the state division, Telangana Finance Minister Eatala Rajender said on Sunday.

“We said both states would develop if bifurcated, but they said both would suffer. But after the bifurcation, two states are doing well and have increased their budgets. This proves our argument that smaller states develop faster,” the Finance Minister told The Hans India and HMTV in an exclusive interview.

Close on the heels of Andhra Pradesh presenting its annual budget of Rs 1.35 lakh crore for the fiscal 2016-17 last week, Telangana is poised to come out with its annual budget of similar size on Monday. Eatala, who is all set to present his third budget, has promised a practical budget that will lay solid foundation for exponential growth of Telangana in the years to come.

The minister, known for his affable demeanour and effective oratory skills, said the budget for 2016-17 would extensively focus on agriculture, irrigation, healthcare, power and social welfare initiatives in addition to industrial sector. “We have gone into minute details and assessed ground realities before preparing the budget.

So, this budget will not be a mechanical exercise, but a practical one. It will be in line with people’s expectations and needs,” Eatala explained. He further said that for the first time after bifurcation, the government was able to identify the revenue potential of the State and also realise the extent of expenditure it could incur. “We could also prioritise the people’s problems.

That way, this will be the first comprehensive budget after bifurcation,” he maintained. The minister admitted that there was fall in agriculture growth from 2.5 per cent to 0.8 per cent now due to drought conditions in 2014-15, but said that higher upswing in service and industrial sectors helped the State in maintaining overall growth rate.

“We expect service and industrial sectors to post much higher growth rates in coming years as Telangana is now able to attract large scale investments from India and abroad,” he said. On irrigation, he said that the budgetary allocation the key sector would not be less than Rs 25,000 crore as earlier announced by the Chief Minister. “Expenditure on irrigation sector is nothing but expenditure on agriculture.

There is no other way to bring farmers out of distress and eliminate suicides in agriculture sector than spending and focusing on irrigation projects. So, we are allocating Rs 25,000 crore in this budget to complete irrigation projects on a war-footing,” he explained.

The other sector which will get big boost in the budget is public health as the government intends to bring radical change in the key sector. “As this sector has grossly been neglected in the undivided state, we decided to initiative transformational changes now.

The budget will have all the details,” Eatala said, adding that super specialty hospitals would be built in Karimnagar and other districts in addition to four in Hyderabad. Alleging some discrimination by the central government towards Telangana, the Minister said he was expecting more funds from the Centre in the areas of agriculture, irrigation and surface transport.

Asked why the government was focusing more on Hyderabad instead of spreading development to all across the State, he said: “The capital city is spread across five districts from Nalgonda to Mahbubnagar and more than two crore people live here.

Moreover, development of the State is linked to that of Hyderabad. However, we all develop all the districts equally and in balanced way, but in different segments. For example, Karimnagar is rice bowl of Telangana while Nizambad is known for spices. In Warangal, we are going to develop textile park”.