Maharashtra’s ₹4.27 lakh crore budget raises spending on 5 focus areas

Maharashtra deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar, who holds the finance portfolio, reduced VAT on CNG and piped cooking gas from 13.3% to 3%. CNG currently sells for ₹66 per kg in Mumbai.

MUMBAI: Deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar on Friday presented Maharashtra’s budget for the next financial year with an outlay of ₹1,15,215 crore for five focus areas — agriculture, health, human resources, transport and industry. Pawar presented what has been described in Maharashtra as a ‘please-all’ budget of ₹4,27,780 crore with an estimated deficit of ₹24,353 crore and several announcements aimed including a reduction in state taxes on CNG and piped cooking gas from 13.5% to 3%.

Mumbai: Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackarey and deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar address the media after presending Maharashtra Budget 2022-23 at Vidhan Bhavan on Friday. (Anshuman Poyrekar/HT Photo)

Ajit Pawar said the Maharashtra government has identified five focus areas including agriculture, health, human resources, transport, industry with an estimated outlay of ₹1,15,215 crore in the next financial year and ₹4 lakh crore over the next three years.

The budget proposes to spend ₹23,888 crore on the agriculture sector, ₹5,244 crore on health, ₹46,667 crore on human resources, ₹28,605 crore for transport infrastructure and ₹10,11 crore for industry and energy sector.

The buget has allocated ₹1,392 crore for upgradation of hospitals, including construction, repair of 49 hospitals and settting up new facilities at the hospitals. It has also announced incentive grants of upto ₹50,000 to 20 lakh famers who repay their crop loans regularly.

Loans worth ₹964 crore disbursed to 34,788 farmers by the land development banks have been waived off. A budgetary allocation of ₹7,500 crore has been made to build 10,000km rural roads under the CM Gram Sadak Yojana.

Pawar also announced that the Value Added Tax (VAT) on natural gas (CNG) and Piped Natural Gas (PNG) will be reduced from 13.5% to 3%. This reduction is expected to cost the government between ₹800 to ₹1,000 crore. The state has also announced that gift deeds will be exempted from stamp duty.

“Our major thrust is on the spending on the capital expenditure and social sector so that more liquidity is pump into the makert giving a boost to the GDP. We have spent whopping ₹63,000 crore on capital expenditure in financial year 21-22, by borrowing ₹90,000 crore. The improved revenue generation over last year’s figures helped us in increasing the expenditure by over ₹1 lakh crore in a year. We restricted our borrowings to 3.5% of the state GDP, despite reduced revenue receipts due to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Pawar.

Tax revenue of Maharashtra is expected to go up by 11.8% in the next financial year beginning April 1 to ₹3.08 lakh crore as compared to the current year. Capital receipts are expected to jump by 7.9% to ₹1.45 lakh crore over the allocation in the currrent FY 23.

A provision of ₹13,340 crore has been made under the district plan, while the annual plan size on development works has been proposed at ₹1,50,000 crore. ₹12,230 crore has be earmarked for Scheduled Castes sub plan and ₹11,190 for triba sub plan.