Haryana Finance Minister Capt. Abhimanyu has urged the Union Finance Minister to enhance the allocation especially for development of infrastructural facilities in rural areas, being priority areas for focussed attention.
He was speaking at pre -budget consultations held by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitely in New Delhi.
While pointing out that all Cooperative Sugar Mills in the State are running in losses and have negative net worth, he said the loss being suffered by the sugar industry at present can be off-set to some extent by laying emphasis on by-products, such as setting up of ethanol and co-generation plants. Therefore, he requested the Centre to provide financial assistance in the form of interest free loans or soft loans for setting up of ethanol and co-generation plants to enable the Sugar Mills to improve their financial health to some extent.
Capt. Abhimanyu said that PMFBY, the farmers friendly crop insurance scheme was implemented during Kharif 2016 and is being continued in Rabi 2016-17. During Kharif 2016, as many as 6.92 lakh farmers and 11.38 lakh hectares were covered under the scheme in the state, said he.
The Minister said that there were some issues which the Central Government may like to address on priority, like subsidy being transferred directly by the Centre to the insurance companies without any record or information sharing with the State Government, no well defined procedure for grievance redressal of the farmers and shortage of manpower with empanelled insurance companies.
To deal with the issue of stubble burning, he sought both financial and technical assistance from the Central Government.
He said that like Scheduled Castes Sub-Plan (SCSP) and Tribal Sub Plan (TSP), the State Government is examining classification of urban and rural heads of budget expenditure.
Haryana’s GSDP has recorded 8.2 per cent growth rate as per the advance estimates of 2015-16 as against the all India growth of 7.6 per cent, he said.
With prudent fiscal management, the State Government is able to absorb impact of Seventh Pay Commission. This reflected in fiscal indicators, which have remained well within the prescribed limits fixed by Central Finance Commission. In 2016-17, the fiscal deficit is expected to be 2.6 per cent of GSDP. Similarly, debt to GSDP ratio is estimated at 19.05 in 2016-17, he added.