Refuting Congress claims that the Gujarat government cut down spending on various pro-people services, Gujarat Finance Minister Saurabh Patel said in the Assembly today that 72 per cent of the budget has been allocated to farmers and the downtrodden this year.
Delivering his speech in the Gujarat Assembly on the last day of discussion on the state budget, presented before the House by him last month, Patel said, "I want to tell the opposition that the state budget of 2015-16 is meant for the farmers and poor people of this state. In this budget, we have allocated 48.54 per cent for social sector while 23.46 per cent of funds has been for agriculture and irrigation".
"This shows that this government is going to spend 72 per cent, that is Rs 56,000 crore, for these people. For the benefit of farmers, we have allocated Rs 9,000 crore for the Sardar Sarovar project, Rs 531 crore for an irrigation project in tribal areas and Rs 2012 crore for the SAUNI Yojna," Patel said.
Talking about the fiscal deficit incurred by Gujarat every year, Patel said that it is unavoidable, since there is no word like "fiscal surplus".
"Have you head of any fiscal surplus? Be it any budget of a state or the Centre, fiscal deficit will always be there. The point is, it should not go beyond three per cent of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), as stipulated by this Assembly. Our deficit is just 2.24 per cent, which is very much as per these norms," Patel told the House.
Patel also claimed that due to the efforts of his government, Gujarat's per capita income has risen from mere Rs 16,585 in 1997 to Rs 1.6 lakh in 2013-14. He also added that Gujarat's GSDP stands at Rs 8,58,189 crore in 2014-15, which used to be merely Rs 2,03,373 crore in 2004-05.
