Tours delay Andhra Pradesh budget works

Hyderabad: Frequent tours of finance department head P.V. Ramesh, finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu and Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu are worrying the officials in finance department as they have to finalise the annual budget for 2016-17 financial year and print budget books.

State government is planning to introduce the annual budget on March 5. The officials said that for printing the budget demands of various departments and other material at least 15 days would be required. It is learnt that department wise budget exercise is yet to be completed.

The budget related meetings with finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu was postponed twice and  finance department principal secretary P.V. Ramesh will be at New Delhi on 8th and 9th of February. CM Naidu is going to New Delhi on 10th February. Mr Naidu, Mr Yanamala and Mr Ramesh and others are going to South Korea on 20th February and will return on February 25 only.

After the completion of official level budget exercise finance minister will take up the matter. Later, CM will review it before finalising the budget. The officials of finance department said that unless the budget is finalised before CM Naidu and his team leave for South Korea, it would not be possible to print the budget books in time.

Last year, finance department had hired two private printing presses for printing budget books. This time the department has hired three printing presses for printing the books. The department used to print about 3,000 copies of budget books but now it has been reduced to about 300 copies.

Yanamala seeks special tag

AP finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishndu has requested the Centre to grant Rs 4,000 crore for the state in the 2016-17 budget.

The fund is required to construct government buildings and other essential infrastructure for Amaravati which  includes metro rail project in Vijayawada.

Mr Yanamala said the state government plans to raise resources for construction of capital city through innovative means, including floating of Amaravati development bonds.

He requested the Centre to exempt all investment in Amaravati infrastructure from taxation and permit the state to seek finance from  National Infrastructure Investment Fund and raise zero coupon bonds and tax free bonds. Mr Yanamala requested the Centre to exempt those farmers who pooled land for capital from capital gains tax.

Union finance minister Arun Jaitley held a state finance ministers’ conference at New Delhi on Saturday and representing AP, the principal finance secretary (PFS) attended the meeting and conveyed Yanamala’s requests.

In the conference AP requested the Centre to release  the outstanding amount of Rs 13,776 crore revenue deficits for the period from 2nd June 2014 to 31st March 2015 in two equal installments— first installment during the current year and the rest in  next financial year.

While demanding special category status to AP,  Mr Yanamala said the case for considering A P on par with special category states has become stronger following Central government’s decision to disconnect 12 central schemes from central assistance and transfer the revenue expenditure of another 13 schemes to the states.

He said that the fiscal situation of the state would not permit financing these 25 schemes during the next five years.