Hyderabad: The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the highest audit institution in the country, has punctured the tall claims of prudent fiscal management by the previous BRS regime and exposed its unhealthy practices particularly with regard to public debt. The then government misled the public on the risk assessment for the guarantees it gave to different entities.
The CAG report tabled in the Assembly on Friday highlighted the discrepancies in the off-budget borrowings (OBB) and the desperate efforts of then government to hide the truth. “The government did not disclose the quantum of its OBB in the budget documents. Audit assessed the OBB to be around Rs 1,18,629 crore. The state government also facilitated Rs 17,829 crore as further loans to entities towards interest and principal of which no details were provided for Rs 602 crore,” the CAG pointed out.
The audit revealed that the value of the gurantees given by the BRS state government was Rs 1,98,244 crore and guarantees for Rs 50,000 crore given to the Civil Supplies Corporation and Rs 398 crore given to Seeds Development Corporation were not disclosed.
The disclosure of guarantees given to power discoms was short by Rs 16,000 crore, it added.
Maintaining that the documentation regarding risk assessment for guarantees was not provided, the CAG made a startling revelation that “even the guarantees which should have been classified as 100 per cent liability were being classified as medium to very low risk.”
The BRS regime went in for OBB over and above the permissible limits fixed by the 15th Finance Commission. While the commission put a cap of 29.7 per cent of the state gross domestic oroduct for OBB, the previous government’s OBB was 35.6 per cent.
A substantial portion of market borrowings was utilised for providing loans and advances to state-level public enterprises and special purpose vehicles with government as partner for debt servicing. “This is not a healthy practice from the perspective of debt sustainability,” the CAG report pointed out.
The report nailed the BRS’ claims of stepmotherly treatment by the Centre vis-à-vis the grants in aid extended to Telangana. The Central grant grew by 53 per cent in 2022-23 and touched Rs 13,179 crore over the previous year but BRS leaders including former chief minister K. Chandrashekar Rao made a scathing attack against the Modi-led Central government.
As Deccan Chronicle reported in these columns earlier, the CAG report also referred to the previous BRS government inflating the estimated receipt of grants-in-aid despite receiving them at an organic growth rate. The BRS government showed Central grants as Rs 41,002 crore in 2022-23 though the actual realisation in the previous year was around Rs 9,000 crore.
