A report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) today said that the Telangana government had been taking huge loans and spending massive amounts of funds on irrigation and agriculture despite the state's low revenues. It advised the government to ration out its existing funds carefully in the Budget and for loan repayment.
The report pointed out that the TRS government needed to pay off loans totalling Rs 76,262 crore over the next seven years.
"Though the state's fiscal deficit is low, the loans it needs to pay off are high. Where revenues are also low but spending remains very high, there is a cause for concern. The state government spent Rs 55,517 crore more than it was supposed to between 2014-15 and 2017-18 without the approval of the Assembly. There should be a mechanism to check such spending," the CAG said.
Raising concerns about the 2021-22 state Budget, the body advised the government to plan a budget based solely on facts, and revenue and expenditure figures.
The report will give the leaders of the Opposition, who have already been flaying the governemnt for its
"unreal" Budget, more ammunition with which to attack it.
Many leaders have been
lambasting the ruling party also for having turned a "profit-making" Telangana into a loss-making one with its fiscal "mismanagement".