Uttar Pradesh budget: Yogi government 2.0 faces resource mobilisation challenges

The Yogi government 2.0 faces major challenges on the resource mobilisation and expenditure front as it presents its first annual budget for 2022-23 in the Uttar Pradesh assembly here on Thursday. The size of the state budget is likely to be over ₹6 lakh crore.

The state government had presented an annual budget of ₹5.50 lakh crore in 2021-2022. Its size went up to ₹5.66 lakh crore with the presentation of supplementary budgets. The interim budget for 2022-23 indicated a size of over ₹6 lakh crore

Minister for finance Suresh Khanna, who gave final touches to the annual budget on Wednesday, has asserted that the budget will be larger in size. He has already said it will focus on the development of infrastructure, youth and women, besides allocating funds for implementation of promises made in the BJP’s Sankalp Patra for the 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly polls.

As a large chunk of promises have been made in the Sankalp Patra and more funds would be needed to implement them along with chief minister Yogi Adityanath’s announcements, the state government will have to mobilise additional resources to fund the items of expenditure.

“How the state government will mobilise additional resources to fund various items of expenditure in the budget remains a challenge. U.P. though is striving hard to accelerate its rate of growth, the current domestic and international situation also poses a challenge,” said professor Yashvir Tyagi, former head of the department of political science, Lucknow University.

Although various efforts have been initiated to boost the state’s economy, the state government’s rising expenditure on the payment of salaries and pension and debt servicing remains a serious cause for concern. The state government, in its budget analysis presented along with the annual budget for 2021-22, had projected its GSDP (Gross State Domestic Product) to grow to the size of ₹21,73,390 crore by March 31, 2022.

In its advance estimates, the Directorate of Economic and Statistics of the Uttar Pradesh government has indicated the GSDP for 2021-2022 may remain at about ₹19.10 lakh crore.

The state government proposes to boost the size of the GSDP to a trillion dollars in the next five years (2022-27).

While a final picture about the present size of the economy will be clear after the presentation of the annual budget on Thursday, the present GSDP may be about 250 billion dollars. The state government will have to take concrete steps to boost the GSDP to nearly four times to achieve the one trillion-dollar target in the next five years. The state government is in the process of appointing a consultant to be tasked to work out a roadmap to boost the size of Uttar Pradesh’s GSDP to a trillion dollars in next five years.