Oppn blames poor resource use for rise in debts

“While the previous DMK government headed by late chief minister M Karunanidhi spent 100 percentage of the borrowings for capital investment and the government headed by another late chief minister J Jayalalithaa used 85 percentage of the borrowings for capital investment, the present government headed by Palaniswami is using only 58 percentage of the funds for capital investment”, said Thiagarajan, during his address on the budget debate.

Deputy Chief Minister and Finance Minister O Panneerselvam presented the state budget on Friday and according to the budget document, the total debt of the state has crossed Rs 4.5 lakh crore. Several opposition parties criticised the state government claiming that the rise in debt was due to the poor management of resources.

Though the state government claimed that steps will be taken to maintain debt as part of its fiscal consolidation roadmap, Palanivel Thiagarajan said that only if the investments increase, the debt will come down. Quoting the data of the state government from previous years, the MLA said during the DMK rule, from 2006 to 2011, state government obtained Rs 44,655.31 crore as debt and invested the entire amount in capital investment.

Similarly, during 2011-16 period when Jayalalithaa was the chief minister the total borrowings was 1.14 lakh crore out of which around Rs 17,000 crore was used for welfare measures and the remaining amount of around Rs 97,000 crore was used for capital investment. “In both the governments, no amount was used for paying interests for borrowings,” said Palanivel Thiagarajan.

However, in the present government the total borrowings from 2016 to 2019 was Rs 1.39 lakh crore out of which 19 percentage has been used for interest payment. “If maximum fund is used for capital investment the state will witness a higher growth due to which the total debt will fall down which will ultimately result in lower payment of interests, but the present government is investing less on capital investment which will not benefit the state in any manner,” said Thiagarajan, who also questioned the decrease in revenue of the state.