‘I am confident we will be revenue-surplus in 4 years’

Jupinderjit Singh

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 20

“No cooked up figures, no fudged data. I have been honest to the core while presenting the Budget,”  Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Badal told The Tribune in an interview today. He challenged the Akalis to influence the Modi-led NDA government at the Centre into waiving loans of Rs 10 lakh or more if they truly cared for the farmers.

“The first 90 days in office were spent on trying to decipher the  figures. It became clear the Akalis had been fudging facts. We have only made conservative Budget estimates and the actual position will be known by August-end, but I am confident of a turnaround. The state will be revenue-surplus in four years. The cut in stamp duty on property in urban areas will boost the real estate sector,” he said.

Confident of generating resources, the minister pointed out that VAT collection was up 30 per cent than the corresponding period last fiscal and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime would mean an increase in revenue by 14 per cent. On the farm loan waiver, he said the farmers had nothing to worry as "it is now between the banks and the government”.  

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

Accusing the Akalis of fudging figures, he said on March 10, a day before the votes were to be counted, the SAD-BJP government signed papers with the RBI regarding the cash credit limit (CCL) as a result of which the state had to pay an instalment of Rs 270 crore per month to the RBI for the next 20 years. 

“Even worse, the Badal government signed papers for automatic deduction of the instalment.” He said a debt of over Rs 30,000 crore on foodgrain procurement too remained unexplained. “Where is the grain worth Rs 12,000 crore on which Punjab has incurred an interest of Rs 18,000 crore? A state government cannot raise loans six months prior to the elections. But the earlier government forced the PIDB and PUDA to do so.”

Unfazed by SAD criticism that he sounded more like a poet than an economist as he read out the Budget proposals, Manpreet said: “They  didn’t pay any heed to the Budget speech. If an under-debt Punjab can waive farm loans up to Rs 2 lakh, I am sure the Modi government, in which Harsimrat Kaur Badal is a minister, can waive loans up to Rs 10 lakh.”

On the promised Rs 2,000 old age pension and Rs 2,500 unemployment allowance, he said it would have to be done in phases. “We have raised the unemployment allowance to Rs 2,100 from Rs 1,500. Old age pension too will be hiked gradually.”

Asked if he would emulate the CM and voluntarily give up subsidy on power supplied to his farm, the minister said he did not have a tubewell at his farm “but I am willing to sacrifice anything for the state’s well-being”.