Kerala suffered from Union Budget: Thomas Isaac

Kerala Finance Minister TM Thomas Isaac said that the state has suffered under the Union Budget 2020-21, presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

"Kerala has suffered. Our tax share was Rs 17,800 crore last year and now it will be only Rs 15,000 crore, it is an absolute decline to the devolution to the state. Whatever apprehensions we had earlier about the Budget have now been realised in practice," Isaac told ANI on Saturday.

The MLA from Alappuzha constituency further said that the present year's Budget showed that the Centre had not learned from the mistakes it committed in the last year.

"The Budget of 2020-21 will be a repeat of the failure of the budget of 2019-20. Clearly, the Finance Minister has not learned lessons from the past years' experience. Within four months of the presentation of the last budget, it had to be amended by three mini-budgets," Isaac said.

"The corporate tax revenue has seen a sharp decline and the further deductions given to companies in this budget will impact the collection in the coming year," he added.

Sitharaman yesterday presented her second Union Budget on behalf of the NDA-2 government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In the longest Union Budget speech in history, Sitharaman talked about tax regime, finance, agriculture, irrigation, water, sanitation, healthcare, education, infrastructure, women, digital connectivity among others.