No mention of Amaravati in Budget 2016

Hyderabad: In the revised estimates, the Centre’s revenue has come down to 8 per cent from 12.5 per cent in the Budget estimate.

Every month, the Centre allots around Rs 2,000 crore to the State under tax devolutions. Due to shortfall of revenue, the Centre will cut Rs 342 crore in March. Principal secretary, finance, P.V. Ramesh said that this was a big blow to the state government.

In the Union Budget allocations, the state government had requested the Centre to make provisions of Rs 4,000 crore for Amaravati and Rs 4,000 crore for Polavaram. However, not a single rupee was allocated for the capital in the budget and only Rs 100 crore was allotted for the Polavaram project.

The state government had requested release of 50 per cent of outstanding arrears of Rs 13,000 crore to fill the revenue gap in the previous financial year and to make a provision in the budget for the remaining 50 per cent. But the Centre did not consider this request too.

For the Vijayawada Metro Rail project, the Centre has allotted Rs 106 crore as its equity share, and only '3 lakh for the Vizag Metro Rail project. For Central and Tribal universities, allocations of only Rs 1 crore each was made.

Mr Ramesh said that the Vizag Metro Rail project and the Central and Tribal Universities had not yet been sanctioned by the Central government and thus it had made notional allotments to these projects. Once the Centre accepts these projects, it would release the required funds, he said.

Regarding the Polavaram project Mr Ramesh said that the Centre had indicated to the state government that whatever amount the state spends would be reimbursed.

The principal secretary, told the media that the Centre had copied many schemes of the state government to implement at the national level.

He said the state government’s schemes like Deepam (gas connections), NTR health scheme, direct payments of all cash disbursement schemes such as pensions, scholarships, digitalisation of revenue records, generic medicines scheme and others had been copied.

He added that the Centre had increased 15 per cent funds to Central government schemes and the state government could make money out of that.