A Budget With Mutually-Disagreeing Numbers

 Assembly: YSRCP MLA Buggana Rajendranath Reddy commented that the budget presented by AP Government seemed to be fake. He magnified the disagreement of numbers in the budget. He gave comprehensive explanation about the AP state budget introduced by financial minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu for the financial year 2016-17. In the beginning of his speech, he quoted Ex. President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and the first Governor General of free India Chakravarti Rajagopalachari. He thanked everybody for allowing him to speak about the presented budget on behalf of YSR Congress Party that believed in Politics and Public Service not being two different theories. Buggana wondered why the financial minister was not present in the house at such a crucial time.

 Buggana mentioned that there would be a benchmark for the budget. He questioned the budget book lacking audits. He reminded that the details of the budget had been shared to them, some in a tablet and some in a pen drive. He stated that budget was all estimation, but specified that there were no proper details of the past expenditure either. He said that revenue expenditure of 2015-16 had been presented as Rs.54,574 crore and the whole expenditure was shown to be Rs. 32,688 crore. I t had been told that the remaining Rs.22 crore was paid as public deposit. He demanded to know what kind of permission the people of the Government had gotten to present a figure like that. FRBM permission for this had to be looked into, specified Buggana.

 Similarly income had been said to be Rs.90,000 crore, among which grant-in-aid was Rs.21,779 crore. Revenue expenditure had been said to be Rs.1,14,000 crore and revenue deficit had been mentioned to be as heavy as Rs.23,314 crore. Capital expenditure had been said to be Rs.11,409 crore. Over all, a deficit of Rs.35,000 crore was apparent and this amounted to 7% of GSDP. But FRBM mentioned that this could not exceed 3% of GSDP. It had to be found out if prior permission was taken. Whether proper permission for using public deposits of Rs.22,000 crore was taken, when and how much of the public deposits was spent, had to be looked into, mentioned Buggana.

 Buggana Rajendranath Reddy also exposed another lie of the financial minister. Yanamala had announced that their spending 99% in AP was the first time to happen in India. But when the budget was Rs.1,18,000 crore, the expenditure was Rs.70,000 crore. Hence, Rs.38,000 crore was still to be spent. How the numbers shown by the finance minister would be true in that case, demanded Buggana.