The Yogi Adityanath government will presents its second budget for 2018-19 fiscal in the Assembly on Friday. The budget is crucial as it comes a week before the Yogi government lays out the red carpet for India Inc at the two day ‘UP Investors’ Summit’ that kickstarts in lucknow from February 21.
The annual budget of Adityanath regime is expected to give major leg-up to the agricultural, infrastructure and social sectors.
In the backdrop of ‘UP Investors Summit’, the budget would also signal to the business community about `ease of doing business’ being pursued by the state government and the overall reformist agenda to creates synergies with Union Budget for maximizing gains.
A senior cabinet minister said that the bufget would be largely in the same mould as Union Budget 2018, which primarily focussed on boosting rural economy and supporting the beleaguered farm sector for boosting rural incomes.
The budget is expected to be populist in nature for gratifying the electorate, especially rural voters, given the political significance of UP in the run up to the 2019 lok Sabha poll.
Meanwhile, the budget size is likely to reach Rs 4.25 lakh crore mark which would be a rise of over 10 per cent compared to the last budget of 2017-18 of Rs 3.84 lakh crore.
During election years, successive budgets have witnessed hikes of about 15 per cent compared to non-election financial years, when the average increase in budget size has flanked 10 per cent.
According to sources, the government would provide liberal budgetary allocation for proposed mega project Purvanchal Expressway estimated to cost over Rs 20,000 crore. Another big road project, Bundelkhand expressway is also proposed and the state was likely to allocate funds for its land acquisition as well. Similarly, the government is likely to allocate funds for proposed Metro rail projects in Kanpur, Meerut and Agra.
These projects, expected to be operational by 2024, are estimated to cost Rs 47,000 crore which include Central share. last month, the Yogi cabinet had approved the detailed project report of these Metro projects.
In its maiden budget in 2017-18, the Yogi government had allocated funds for its flagship crop loan waiver scheme of Rs 36,000 crore to benefit 8.6 million small and marginal farmers. Owing to this provisioning and without any Central grant, the state’s finances virtually went for a toss and the government functioned on a rather shoestring budget.
Therefore, other pre-poll promises such as free laptop to college students, could not be fulfilled. With this budget, the government would seek to fill critical gaps and allocate funds for hitherto neglected areas, including education, health, social sectors, sanitation, urban development, tourism etc.