TIL Desk/National/Kolkata-West Bengal Finance Minister Amit Mitra on Friday proposed no new taxes, promised 22 lakh jobs and came up with a slew of administrative and tax reforms to aid ease of doing business while increasing Plan Expenditure to Rs 57,905 crore as he presented the budget for 2016-17. “I propose to increase the Plan Expenditure to Rs 57,905 crore for 2016-17, ” Mitra said during his budget speech in the assembly.
In the last fiscal (2015-16), the state’s actual Plan Expenditure surpassed the estimated allocation by seven per cent. While the budget estimate was Rs 49,507 crore, the actual expenditure was Rs.53,010 crore — almost Rs.4,000 crore more. On Friday, Mitra estimated the budget deficit at Rs 8 crore in the current fiscal. He did not propose any fresh taxes notwithstanding the state being debt stressed.
The minister said fiscal deficit was brought down to 2.68 per cent and revenue deficit to 1.03 percent in 2015-16. Mitra said the state borrowed Rs.1,13,104 crore in the last five years. But out of that, Rs.94, 533 crore was drained out only for debt servicing of the debt taken by the previous government. “We borrowed about Rs 18,571 crore for development in the last five years, that is, a yearly loan of only Rs 3,718 crore,” he said.
