Cash-strapped govt to raise Rs 500-cr loan

Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, November 22

The Himachal Government will raise loans worth Rs 500 crore to meet its developmental needs and to meet its committed liabilities of salary and pensions towards its retired and serving employees.

The debt trap in the cash-strapped state has mounted to Rs 48,973 crores by the end of August 2018. The BJP regime has raised loans to the tune of Rs 2,587 crore between December 2017 and August 2018, revealed officials. With this latest loan of Rs 500 crore, the total loan raised by the government will cross Rs 3,000 crore mark. As per the notification issued by the Department of Finance today, the loan has been raised with the consent of the Central Government as required under Article 293 (3) of the Constitution of India.

Notwithstanding the blame game for financial woes of the state that the two main political parties — the Congress and the BJP — love to engage in, the government in line with the past tradition has invited suggestions from the general public, industry, farmers, various association and NGOs before the next budget for the year 2019-20 is presented. The budget session of the Vidhan Sabha which is normally held in March-April too has been advanced. It will now be held in January -February in view of the parliamentary polls in May next year. This has been done to reflect the aspirations of various stakeholders in the budget and make to make it more people centric and participative.

The Chief Minister has held meetings with the tourism and Civil Aviation, Public Works and Excise and Taxation departments during the last two days to review the progress of the ongoing projects. He sought from the official the details of the spending and the programmes they would want to be included in the budget for the year 2019-20. “The committed liability on account of the salary burden of all government employees as of now is Rs 9,500 crore annually, besides Rs 4,900 crore pensionary liability,” revealed officials.

The Jai Ram Government has identified six core areas namely power, infrastructure, industry, tourism, agriculture-horticulture and allied sector and services for bringing in the much-needed revenue. The disturbing trend of declining revenue from the power sector which had dipped to Rs 700 crore in 2016-17 had improved somewhat in 2017-18. As compared to revenue of about Rs 700 crore from the power sector at in 2016-17, it touched Rs 900 rores in 2017-18.