Uttarakhand confident of achieving fiscal target, bets big on next six months

Sources in the government claim that only 20-30% of the revenue has been generated against the target in the six months of this fiscal

Uttarakhand finance minister Prakash Pant Monday said the government was confident of achieving the financial target set for 2017-18. The BJP government, he said, has set a target of ₹15,057 crore and was hopeful of achieving it.

State finance minister Prakash Pant blamed previous Congress government for ‘economic breakdown of Uttarakhand’. (HT File)

“We are hopeful of generating revenue against the set target by increasing non-tax and other revenues. We still have six months at our disposal and are positive of recovering what we had planned,” said Pant.

He was speaking on the sidelines of a Janta Darshan at BJP office here. Blaming the previous government for “economic breakdown” of Uttarakhand, the minister claimed that the state was on a “path of recovery” .

“The economic condition of the state was in a shambles when the BJP took over in March this year,” Pant said, adding that the previous government failed to achieve the target for 2016-17.

Sources in the government, meanwhile, claim that only 20-30% of the revenue has been generated against the target in the six months of this fiscal.

Higher education and cooperative minister Dhan Singh Rawat, who too attended the programme, ordered an internal investigation into the formation and functioning of 97 cooperative committees. Claiming that more than 50% of such committees were non-operational, he said, “I have given orders to dissolve them so that we can start a fresh exercise. We want improvement in cooperative sector.”