Comprehensive health insurance cover for all, setting up Social Security Mission, old age destitute pensions and Rs 60 crore to empower women-run Kudumbasree SHGs (self-help groups) are some of the welfare sops that Kerala finance minister TM Thomas Isaac has packed in his Rs 627-crore deficit budget (2008-2009) presented to the state Assembly on Thursday. His dole gestures include a whopping Rs 700 crore tax arrear waiver and Rs 188 crore penal interest waiver for state’s transport utility KSRTC.
“Besides tax arrears waiver, KSRTC and Kerala Water Authority will get full budgetary support to ensure them balance sheets clean enough to make them qualify for loans to make a fresh start. Since the State governments are tightbelted from market loans beyond a limit, all that State can do is to back the PSUs in their independent revitalisation packages,” Thomas Isaac told reporters later. The number of profitmakers in the State’s PSU stables are now up from 12 to 24.
In the model of Farm Debt Relief Commission, fishermens’ debt relief commission will be set up this year, Isaac said in his budget speech. A Rs 86-crore package is readying for fisheries sector. As far as the farm sector is concerned, the State government intends to piggyback the Central government package.
For water transport Rs 50 crore has been set aside, besides the Rs 80-crore share for the Kerala leg of national waterways development. For modernising two international airports (Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode) and starting work on a new one, Rs 21 crore has been allotted for the next fiscal. For Vizhinjam international deepsea port, the State has made an initial allotment of Rs 67.5 crore.
In power sector, Rs 14 crore has been set aside this year for setting up a non-conventional energy park through the State agency Kinfra . Athirampilli hydel project will get Rs 60 crore and the completion of Edamalayar project Rs 8 crore.
Following the encouraging returns from its Grand Kerala Shopping Festival, the State has shifted its focus to projecting itsself as a shopping destination. Rs 20 crore extra has been set aside this fiscal to set up a trade fair authority. Around Rs 78 crore is allotted for IT infrastructure development.
Despite 12% revenue-side buoyancy and ARM (additional resource mobilisation) to the tune of Rs 188 crore, the State government has posted a revenue deficit of Rs 3,367 crore in the fiscal, only a tad lower than last year’s Rs 4644 crore. The fiscal deficit for 2008-2009 is Rs 5,625 crore. In the previous fiscal this was Rs 6900 crore.
“It’s not my dream budget yet,” Isaac said. “Once the welfare arrears and State’s one-time liabilities are settled, I mean to present and deliver a more development-oriented budget,” he said.