Hyderabad, March 18, 2013: Describing the state budget for 2013-14 as a jugglery of figures, YSR Congress has said that the government owes an apology for the goof up in the State Assembly where Agriculture Minister read out a statement in the name of special agriculture budget.
“The budget figures are superfluous and do not reflect the priorities, as they do not have a comparative analysis. The promise of achieving a higher growth rate is an act of jugglery as there has been a negative growth in the core sectors during the past two years,” party leaders DA Somayajulu and Sreekanth Reddy told reporters here on Monday.
Taking objection to the statement being read out by Agriculture Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana in the name of agriculture budget is a gross misuse of the assembly time for which the state owes an apology they said adding that there is no such provision.
According to the socio economic survey, for the past two years, agriculture has registered a negative growth rate of 6.2 per cent and 2.6 per cent, yet the State is promising a rosy picture trying to camouflage facts. The manufacturing sector has also taken a beating with a negative growth rate of 4.25 per cent in organised sector and 1.98 per cent in non-organised sector, while the production of electricity and gas has also fallen down.
While all the parameters of growth are on the slide showing figures and estimates in whopping measure is only to confuse people and hide the actual situation, they said.
Budget has no credibility and vision
The Rs 1.63 lakh crore budget presented by Finance Minister Anam Ramnarayan Reddy has no vision and credibility as in the past the estimates were revised and targets were not met, they said.
The growth rate during YSR term was 9.6 per cent in 2005-06 and went up to 11.18 and 12.2 per cent by in 2007-09 while it started falling from the next year as there was no economic activity and revenue generation was poor, they said.
The government claim that agriculture loans would be given at zero per cent interest is a mirage as it is not practicable as the state has Rs 1.25 lakh crores as agriculture loans, half of which are crop loans.
The government has given blanket figures wherever it was inconvenient to mention the actuals as in the case of housing. It has given the figure of 42 lakhs but did not specify the period nor had given any break-up, they said adding that the allocations for the next twelve months means very little unless the goals achieved during previous years are not spelt out clearly.
The SC ST Sub-Plan is a welcome sign but it has allowed the government to have discretionary powers to spend funds for the non-divisible infrastructure which is against the spirit of the legislation. YSR during his term had overcome this by adopting the saturation mode and launching welfare schemes like Aarogyasri, pensions, fees reimbursement and the like, they said.
We demand the government to give subsidy to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) for diesel used to generators in wake of the acute power cuts. The state has increased the VAT to cottage, small and medium industries from 5 to 14 per cent which will further hamper the industrial growth, they said.
The State has not done justice to any sector and there are no resources to translate promises into deeds as the growth rate is drastically falling with economic activity slowing down. Vacancies for minorities were not filled so far and drinking water schemes were confined to only Chittoor district, they said.
We demand the government to take initiative and fix petro prices on a yearly basis instead of handing over the price fixation mechanism to the oil companies, they said.
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