Rs 76.74 crore deficit budget presented in Tripura

Agartala, June 6 (UNI) Tripura Finance Minister Badal Choudhury today presented a deficit budget of Rs 5248.76 crore in the state Assembly for 2008-09.

In his budget speech, Mr Choudhury said the state would be able to make surplus of Rs 783.29 crore from revenue account and the state had opening balance of Rs 650 crore but there was a deficit of Rs 1510.03 in the capital account.

He, however, assured to meet up the deficit amount of Rs 76.74 crore by judicious fiscal approach.

'' We have estimated the expenditure at Rs 1763.03 crore, which was less than Rs 1300 crore under capital account for infrastructure and asset creation and it increased the burden of deficit in the total budget,'' Mr Choudhury said.

Total revenue received during 2008-09 had been estimated at Rs 5172.02 crore against the estimated expenditure of Rs 5248.76 crore, he said and added that the state government had made target as per fiscal correction path achieved besides enriching the consolidated sinking fund and debt stock in terms of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) percentage was brought down ahead of the target.

He said the state government would create more posts in various government departments during the budget year and already 9700 people had been recruited against newly created 19000 posts in last fiscal.

No new tax was proposed in the budget proposal and the minister anticipated that the growth of state's tax revenue in 2008-09 would be raised to 18.3 per cent over the collection of previous year and at the same time the budget size had also been increased to 22.67 per cent.

UNI BB KK BDP CS1755