JOIN USTelangana presents Budget with expenditure outlay of Rs 2.9 lakh crore for FY24
The K Chandrasekhar Rao government’s election year budget has no new major announcements on the welfare front but has made generous allocations for such programmes already implemented like Rythu Bandhu, Dalit Bandhu.
Assembly elections are due in December though opposition parties are apprehensive about the probability of the BRS chief and CM KCR calling for early polls like he did the last time in 2018.
In the Telangana annual state budget 2023-24 presented in the legislative assembly on Monday, FM Harish Rao allotted Rs 17,700 crore for Dalit Bandhu. The scheme offers a grant of Rs 10 lakh for the Dalit families, "in a first such initiative in the country", to help improve their financial position with income-generating ventures like small businesses. Dalit Bandhu was introduced ahead of the Huzurabad bypoll in 2021.
For Rythu Bandhu, the annual farm investment support of Rs 10,000 per acre, which the government says is benefiting 65 lakh farmers in the state, the FM has allocated Rs 15,075 crore. The scheme, introduced a few months ahead of the 2018 polls, is considered a factor that helped KCR retain power.
An outlay of Rs 6,385 crore was made towards fulfilling KCR's promise of farm debt waiver.
As promised earlier, FM Rao said that from April 2023, contract employees in the government will be regularised.
On the economic development front, Rs 3,520 crore is proposed towards incentives for industrial promotion, power subsidy for industries and extension of Pavalavaddi (low interest) scheme to all the Small Scale Industries and food processing units.
Rs 500 crore is allocated for the development of infrastructure facilities in the state universities. While Rs 500 crore is set aside for the Regional Ring Road planned around Hyderabad along with Rs 400 crore for the construction of buildings for the Secretariat.
In the Budget 2023-24, the total expenditure proposed is Rs 2,90,396 crore, revenue expenditure is Rs 2,11,685 crore and the capital expenditure proposed is Rs 37,525 crore.
FM Rao claimed that Telangana “has created history recording the highest growth rate of 11.8 per cent in per capita income during 2017-18 to 2021-22 period among the Southern States.”