The State government is exploring ways to raise financial resources to fulfil its commitments like crop loan waiver in the run-up to the Assembly elections, the schedule for which is likely to be issued early next month.
Chief Minister K.Chandrasekhar Rao, during a meeting with senior officials and Ministers on August 2, had directed them to complete loan waiver in all respects by September second week. The government is expected to incur an expenditure of ₹21,556.64 crore under the crop loan waiver scheme 2018, Agriculture Minister S. Niranjan Reddy said during the Budget session of the assembly.
The revenue receipts were not up to expectations in the first four months of the current financial year at ₹46,845 crore, just 21.63% of the budget estimates and this includes borrowings and other liabilities of ₹20,649 crore. It is in this background, the government has been struggling to raise the required resources.
The government has, so far, raised around ₹17,000 crore through auction of lands and leasing out of the outer ring road. As part of its monetisation efforts, the government had given ORR on toll operate and transfer basis to IRB Infrastructure Developers Limited for an estimated ₹7,380 crore.
This was followed by auction of lands at Kokapet, Budvel, Mokila and other areas in the HMDA limits fetching it another ₹7,100 crore, including ₹3,300 crore in Kokapet alone where an acre of land fetched a record ₹100 crore. Subsequently, the schedule for auction of liquor outlets was advanced and a record number of 1.31 lakh applications, or close to 50 applications an outlet for the 2,620 outlets, were received. In the process, the government raised ₹2,629 crore in the form of non-refundable deposit of ₹2 lakh each per application.
Though these resources have come in handy for implementation of crop loan waiver up to ₹99,999, the government is said to be still falling short. Given the restrictions imposed by the Union Finance Ministry on market borrowings, Finance department officials are struggling to raise the resources as implementation of crop loan waiver would be a major factor in the run-up to the elections due this year-end.