Hyderabad: The TS government’s plans to mobilise funds for taking up various development projects have gone haywire. It’s exactly a year since the government devised plans to raise Rs 1.50 lakh crore from various funding agencies but the Centre is yet to accord approval to these proposals.
Despite repeated reminders from the state government, there has been no communication from the Centre permitting TS to raise funds from foreign lending agencies like BRICS Bank in China and Rabobank in the Netherlands.
The raising of the borrowing limit under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act to 3.5 per cent of Gross State Domestic Product from the current 3 per cent is pending as the Centre has so far permitted only 3.25 per cent, expressing doubts over GSDP figures submitted by the TS government.
While the 3.5 per cent FRBM limit would have enabled the state government to mobilise an additional Rs 3,000 crore from the market, it has to now be satisfied with just Rs 1,500 crore.
The World Bank team had visited Telangana in August last year and met Chief Secretary Rajiv Sharma and senior officials to discuss on loan proposals.
The government had sought a Rs 1.50 lakh crore loan. But the World Bank expressed its inability to provide such a huge loan and advised it to consider securing loans from BRICS Bank and Rabobank.
A senior finance official said, “We have been pursuing the case with Centre for the last eight months but there has been no response. Finance minister Etela Rajender and MAUD minister K.T. Rama Rao have been making efforts to secure approvals by meeting finance ministry officials whenever they are in Delhi. Except getting assurances that it will be looked into, nothing has materialised so far.” With no approval from Centre, these projects failed to make any progress during the last one year due to lack of funds.
