Venkatram Reddy Sureddy
It is very unfortunate to see errors and omissions in Budget in Brief report of Telangana Budget 2018-19.
A very important indicator of the finances of the government, budget reports help the people, people’s representatives, media and various stakeholders understand how the revenues are derived and how the money is spent. Budget-in-Brief that provides an overview of the budget proposals is a high priority report because not many have time or patience to run through the entire budget reports and hence get a quick understanding of the financial health of the government by browsing through this document. Telangana Budget-in-Brief report 2018-19 has errors and omissions which make it difficult to understand the finances of the state government.
Take for the example the ‘Trends in Revenue Receipts’ table on page 11 of Budget-in-Brief. State’s share of GST which is more than one-third of state’s taxes is omitted. See table below:
Also, in the table ‘An Analysis of Revenue Receipts’ on page 20 of Budget-in-Brief, while some numbers are reported in Rs. Crores, others are reported in Rs. lakhs. Also, certain revenues (State’s share of GST) are omitted, even as certain revenues are duplicated (Central taxes such as Customs and Union Excise). See table below:
Budget reports are sacrosanct documents because by end of it government is answerable to the public. Analysis of budget is very important to understand how the government is performing. Such mistakes in such high priority reports presented to Legislative Assembly are totally unacceptable.