UP Budget: Debt burden on Yogi government more than state’s total budget

The debt burden of the state government is expected to reach an astounding amount of over ₹5,16,184.45 crores, more than the state's total budget as debt per person in the state during the current financial year would be around  ₹20,702.

In the last fiscal of 2019-20, the debt was around ₹47,3563.22 crore but later it was revised to ₹47,6154.70 crores.

“This year the debt on the state government has gone up and it is more than the budget size which is ₹5,12,860.72 crore and the debt is ₹51.6 lakh crore,” an official in the finance department said.

Despite this, chief minister Yogi Adityanath, in his post-budget press meet, claimed that the government was opting for strict financial discipline as the state is facing a huge financial crisis, the official said.

In 2018-19, the debt per person was around ₹19,239 per person with a total loan of ₹442508.70 crores while the earlier estimate was ₹44,3362.52 crores and hence the debt per person was ₹20,152 after taking the population of the state to around 23 crores.

According to the budget statistics, the total revenue of ₹50,0558.53 crores will be generated by the state during 2020-21, with the highest of 33 per cent coming from the state taxes, 30.4 per cent share of central taxes and 14.4 per cent from the Central assistance.

The government will also collect 13.1 per cent of the revenue from public loans.

With a total expenditure of ₹5,12,860.87 crore, the highest 37.1 per cent would be spent for payment of wages, pension and allowances to the government employees and aided educational institutions and pension.

The state will also spend 7.6 per cent of the funds to pay the interest on the loans, 5 per cent to pay back the loans, while 16.1 per cent will be spent on capital expenditure. The government will also pay 3.3 per cent of its expenditure on subsidy.

Of the total expected loans of the UP government during the coming fiscal, the highest would be from the market borrowing of ₹323461.48  crore, which is 18.1per cent of the total loans. UP government is also expecting a loan of ₹11815.12 crores from the Centre, ₹19368.64 crores from financial institutions and ₹42277.10 crores from power bonds.

Earlier, Finance Minister Suresh Khanna presented a tax-free but a deficit budget of ₹5.12 lakh crore budget. The budget size is around 33,000 crores more than the previous budget which is around 6 per cent more than last year.

According to the estimate, the total revenue collection of the state would be around ₹5,00,558.53 crore while the total expenditure would be around ₹5,12,860.72 crores with a deficit of 12,302.19 crores.