Pension for farmers likely in this Budget

Sushil Manav

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, February 23

The budget to be presented on Monday is likely to include the announcement of a pension scheme for farmers. Refusing to confirm this during an informal chat with The Tribune here on Saturday, Finance Minister Capt Abhimanyu admitted that the move had been under consideration of the government for the past some time.

The government had constituted a high-level committee under state BJP chief Subhash Barala last month to explore options for rolling out a pension scheme for farmers. The committee, which had submitted its report, recommended a monthly pension of Rs 5,000 to farmers.

Asked what people could expect from the budget, he replied that his focus had always been on fiscal prudence and financial discipline rather than populist measures, and these would be reflected in this budget too.

“Haryana’s GSDP growth has remained slightly higher than the country’s GDP growth of 7.2 per cent and this growth will be reflected in the budget size,” he said. The budget size for 2018-19 was Rs 1.15 lakh crore and revised budget estimates were of Rs 1.28 lakh crore.

Talking about fiscal deficit and debt, Capt Abhimanyu said fiscal deficit of 3 per cent of GSDP was healthy fiscal discipline. He said the government had never allowed it to cross this limit despite loans worth Rs 26,000 crore of discoms taken over by the state government under the Ujwal Discoms Assurance Yojana (UDAY).

He said debt to GSDP ratio of less than 25 per cent was considered healthy, but in Haryana it hovered between 22 and 23 per cent even after UDAY. This ratio was likely to be maintained in this year’s budget, he said. “But for UDAY, we could have brought down debt to GSDP ratio to between 17 and 18 per cent,” he said.

He said the government had stopped pilferage of Rs 3,000 crore by initiating direct benefit transfer of pension and other benefits. He said by last December-end, the government had found Rs 17,500 crore deposited in multiple accounts of the department lying unused for a long time.

He said by introducing performance-linked outlay, the government had ensured that before demanding money for a particular head, the department concerned knew how much money it had under other heads.

}Haryana's GSDP growth has remained slightly higher  than the country's GDP growth of 7.2 per cent and this growth will be  reflected in the budget size. —Capt Abhimanyu, Finance Minister