New Delhi, August 9: Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh in separate meetings with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday highlighted the weak financial condition of the state and sought central help to enable it to undertake welfare and development projects.
He first met Modi. Each of the meeting lasted for about 15 minutes. A Punjab government functionary said the issues discussed on both occasions were identical.
Amarinder urged the Union Government to relax norms under the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, and enhance the state’s borrowing limit to help it to measure up to its agriculture debt waiver commitment. This includes help to families of farmers who committed suicide. He batted for the enhancement of the state’s borrowing limit by Rs 10,000 core.
The CM requested them to direct the quarters concerned in order to bail out the state from the financial morass. He underlined that the state’s financial position, which had already been in the red, had become stark on account of its benevolence in providing help to farmers and their families enmeshed in a debt trap.
He gave a low down of the state’s help to the farmers. It includes waiver of crop loan up to Rs 2 lakh for small and marginal farmers.
Amarinder informed that the state had decided to take over the total debt of suicide-affected families. These exclusively concern more than 7,000 farmers who committed suicide in the last 10 years.
With the total beneficiaries of more than 10 lakh families, the financial implication of these steps was to the tune of Rs 9,500 core. In this context, the CM said the current annual borrowing limit at 3 per cent of the GSDP amounted to Rs 12,819 crore, leaving a gap of Rs 10,273 between revenue and expenditure.
News Source: http://www.tribuneindia.com
