The financial crunch being faced by the Andhra Pradesh government has slowed the implementation of the irrigation projects taken under its ambitious Jalayagnam programme. Several works have been delayed or stopped temporarily by contractors, pending clearance of their bills for the works they had completed.
As on Monday, the amount payable to the contractors against the bills submitted for the works done reached a whopping Rs. 4,300 crore. In the light of this, questions are being raised in some quarters whether the government will be able to meet its commitments towards irrigation sector for which a budget of Rs. 17,800 crore was provided in the budget.
This is because, it has released only Rs. 7,000 crore to this sector for the eight months of the fiscal so far and only four months are left to pump in the balance Rs. 10,800 crore.
Worse fears are being expressed about the government capacity to fulfil the Rs. 1.03 lakh crore budget it had presented in the Assembly for 2009-10. The achievement was hardly 78 per cent under the Rs. one lakh-crore budget similarly adopted for 2008-09.
Slump in market
Sources in the government attributed the slowdown mainly to lack of revenue accruals to Commercial Taxes and Stamps & Registrations Departments due to the slump in the consumer and real estates markets respectively. The Registration Department is hardly getting Rs. 100 crore as against its monthly target of Rs. 250 crore. The accruals of the Commercial Taxes Department nosedived to Rs. 1,900 a month (target Rs. 2,500).
The Transport, Excise and Mines & Geology departments are faring better but they will not be able to make up the loss of other departments.
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