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Andhra appoints ex-finance secy as adviser to CM Jagan
The state government issued an order late on Sunday night. Garg has been given the rank of a cabinet minister in the state government and a tenure of two years.
The Andhra Pradesh government has appointed retired former Union finance secretary, Subhash Chandra Garg, as advisor to chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, to help the cash-strapped state mobilise resources.
The state government issued an order late on Sunday night. Garg has been given the rank of a cabinet minister in the state government and a tenure of two years.
The order said Garg, in the capacity of advisor to CM (resource mobilisation) shall spend 15 days in a month on the assignment including 7-10 days at the state headquarters.
Andhra Pradesh has a debt to GDP ratio of 31.6%, one of the highest among Indian states, junior finance minister in the Union government, Anurag Thakur, said in a written reply in Parliament on February 3.
While the Jagan Reddy led government has blamed the previous government headed by the TDP’s N Chandrababu Naidu for pushing the state into a debt trap by taking the borrowings to Rs 2.60 lakh crore, the fact is that it still needs money. Thus far this year, it has already borrowed Rs 40,000 crore.
State finance minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy could not be reached for comment, as he is said to be busy with preparations for annual budget. He, however, said while commenting on the Union budget last month that the state was facing resource crunch, as devolution from the Centre had come down.
“The share of GST returns from the Centre had come down by about Rs 2,500 crore for the last fiscal. It had paid only Rs 3,979 crore towards revenue deficit compensation as against Rs 18,969 crore,” he said.
On Monday, the chief minister held an official review meeting on Mission Build programme, aimed at additional resource mobilization through monetisation of vacant government lands through National Building Construction Corporation. Jagan directed that the officials identify the government lands and sell them for funding development and welfare schemes.
Garg’s appointment comes against this backdrop.
A 1983-batch IAS officer of the Rajasthan cadre, Garg took voluntary retirement from his service in October 2019, after he was shifted out of the Union finance ministry and transferred to the department of energy in July. At the time, there was speculation that he was being moved for suggesting the controversial idea of sovereign bonds.
Garg is expected to be in charge of the revenue generation projects of all state government departments.
Garg also pushed for a one-time transfer of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)’s reserves to the government as part of the Bimal Jalan committee looking into the capital economic framework of the central bank.
