The Uttar Pradesh government unveiled the Budget for 2013-14 in the state assembly on Tuesday, estimating a total expenditure of Rs 2.21 lakh crore. Mayawati’s BSP, the main opposition party, staged a walkout alleging that more than 75% of last year’s Budget remained unspent.
?The state will move ahead with this budget and the target of making UP ?Uttam Pradesh? (excellent state) will be achieved,?Akhilesh told reporters here. “Through this budget, we have made effort to provide maximum benefit to all sections of the society, including farmers, youths, Muslims, women and poor,” he said. The Budget, presented by the chief minister Akhilesh Yadav who also hold the finance portfolio,showed a 9.8% increase from last year’s size of R2 lakh crore.
Keeping in mind the upcoming Lok Sabha elections, Yadav’s populist and revenue-surplus Budget is trying to push the pace of difficult-looking election promises made before the last assembly elections.
The 10% increase in Budget presents a 19.4% increase in the plan side and the non plan side has an increase of only 7%. The Budget showed revenue surplus of R1,226 crore and fiscal deficit has been kept at 2.94% of the state GSDP.
The collections from VAT are budgeted to show an increase of 20%. Other tax revenues, too, are expected to jump 20%. Buoyant after the success of the Agra summit to woo investors, the Budget addressed the issue of investment promotion in an upbeat mode with a record increase of 21.5% on the capital side and with a couple of policies for facilitating private investment, the growth rate proposed has been kept at 8.5% which is little higher than the national growth rate.
The commitments of laptops, loan waiver for farmers, the kanya vidya dhan and promised doles to minority and other marginal sections continue to take the cake and the state economy, trying to eat a humble pie, liberally earmarked funds as their share in the central sector schemes.
Yadav also announced a metro rail for Lucknow, a new 8-lane access controlled greenfield expressway between Agra and Lucknow,, construction of 259 bridges, a northern peripheral road near Ghaziabad and establishment of a 3D geo spatial database of high-resolution satellite system for monitoring and coordination of development work and the much-awaited vehicle-tracking response system to control security and traffic control in 4 major cities ? Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad and Ghaziabad.
The budget has allocated R32,886 crore for education, R20,292 crore for social welfare schemes, R10,654 crore for health, R26,141 crore for sprucing infrastructure and value-addition on roads, bridges, expressways, flyovers and R17,774 crore for agriculture. It has also earmarked R1,200 crore for unemployment allowance and R100 crore for the development of Poorvanchal.