Uttar Pradesh's capex grew 563% in H1; 30% fall for Andhra Pradesh

There was a wide variation of capex growth in the first six months of the current financial year by the top ten states in terms of tax devolution.

For instance, while Odisha saw its capex grow by just 12.58 per cent year-on-year, Uttar Pradesh witnessed a 563 per cent rise.

The base of the previous year was low, so the growth should be unusually high. Even then, Andhra Pradesh saw a fall of 30 per cent in capex. To get a real sense of capex growth, one should compare it with the first six months of pre-Covid period of 2019-20.

Here also, growth varies widely in the range of 16.69 per cent to 202.29 per cent. For instance, Bihar saw the highest growth, but its data was for the first five months, since the figures for September were not available for 2019-20.

West Bengal, whose figures are also available till August of FY22, saw contraction in capex, while Maharashtra witnessed a decline in the first six months of FY22 compared with the corresponding pre-Covid period. The finance ministry will devolve double the amount of tax devolution to states this month to enable them to go for higher capex.

These ten states will account for 72 per cent of that devolution.