Tripura unveils deficit budget for 2014-15, no new taxes

Tripura Finance Minister Badal Chowdhury today presented a deficit budget for 2014-15 with an estimated total expenditure of Rs 12,404.77 crore and total receipt of Rs 12,246.11 crore, while announcing no new taxes.
The budget leaves a deficit of Rs 158.66 crore.
In his budget speech, Chowdhury said the deficit would be squared up by compressing non-development expenditure, stepping up of resource mobilisation, better tax enforcement and through austerity measures.
As per the discussions with the Planning Commission, he said, all the Centrally sponsored schemes have been restructured into 66 Centrally sponsored schemes comprising the block grants, which were routed through the budget.

He said the total estimated revenue expenditure is Rs 8,117.47 crore which has gone up by 19.19 per cent over the Budget Estimate (BE) of 2014-15 and by 13.69 per cent over the Revised Estimate (RE), 2013-14.
The state's own tax revenue is projected at Rs 1,278.37 crore which is 7.97 per cent higher than the 2013-14 BE, he added.

Regarding major programmes, the state finance minister said, the scheme to provide bicycle to girl students (class IX to class XII) from economically poor families with income below Rs 1.25 lakh per annum, which was started during 2013-14, will be continued.

The government proposed to set up a state university at the MBB College Complex here. It is proposed to set up the Tripura Medical Services Corporation for procurement, storage and distribution of Medicines and Equipments for all Health Care Institutions, he said.
State Government launched Tripura State Government Housing Scheme (TSGHS), aiming to provide Housing Assistance to BPL families during the period from 2013-14 to 2017-18. Total houseless families identified are 1,40,031 out of which 43,217 will be covered under TSGHS over a period of five years and remaining 96,814 families would be covered under IAY and other schemes, he said.

A Software Technology Park will be set up in the city to give fillip to the IT industry in the state, he added.