AP Budget 2016: Youth top priority, says FM Yanamala Ramakrishnudu

Hyderabad: The next Session of Andhra Pradesh Assembly will be held in Amaravati. The state administration will be shifted to the new capital from Hyderabad by June.

Finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu made the announcement during his Budget reply in the House on Friday. He said the government will give top priority to the youths and very soon the government will come up with a Youth Policy for the state.

Mr Ramakrishnudu said the government would fill up vacancies in the government based on present requirements. It had already taken steps to fill 20,000 posts and another 20,000 posts were in the process of filling.  

These were of Group 1 and 2 as also other posts. He said Opposition members were criticising the utilisation of funds by the state government from the PD account. “It is not a crime, it is not a bad practice, it is cash management,” he said.

The minister said the state government wanted to make AP a “poverty-free state.”

To increase the per capita income of the people, the government would gi-ve importance to agriculture, industrialisation and employment generation.

Mr Ramakrishnudu said the state government would utilise every paisa for the state’s development and welfare of the people. In the Budget plan, the expenditure has been increased and non-Plan expenditure redu-ced, compared to the previous year. The government was expecting a 16 per cent revenue growth and was committed to achieve 15 per cent Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), he said.

The finance minister said the regularisation of services of contract employees and increasing salaries to outsourcing employees were under consideration of the Cabinet sub-committee and very soon a final decision would be taken. For the development of the state, the Centre should announce Special Catego-ry Status for AP and funds sanctioned liberally, he said.

He said the state government was in the process of constructing a permanent capital and the Centre had sanctioned some funds. More funds were expected from Delhi. The state government has sanctioned '130 crore for construction of the temporary capital. Some people were creating hurdles in the construction of the new capital but the government was committed to construct a world-class capital city, he said.