States achieve 84% of capex budget, 4 exceed target amount: CAG data

The provisional accounts of 25 states for the year FY24 showed they achieved 84 per cent of the budgeted capital expenditure, with the exception of four states, including Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, and Sikkim, spending more than the targeted amount, according to data by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

These states had budgeted a capital expenditure (capex) programme of Rs 8.37 trillion for FY24. The provisional amount spent was Rs 7.02 trillion. Experts said that not having enough projects to implement could have also caused this shortfall in meeting the budgeted capex target.

“A factor that would have contributed to the shortfall could be the practice of some states waiting till the end of the year to balance the fiscal deficit and cutting back on capex, which is a discretionary expenditure to meet their targets,” said Madan Sabnavis, chief economist, Bank of Baroda.

States with the lowest capex absorption included Nagaland, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, and Mizoram, according to CAG data.

For the April-February period of FY24, the Centre had spent 85 per cent of the revised capital expenditure estimate of Rs 9.5 lakh crore.

In her interim budget, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had raised the Centre’s capital expenditure target by 16.9 per cent for financial year 2024-25 (FY25) to Rs 11.1 trillion over the revised estimates for FY24.

The CAG data also showed that the total tax revenue for the 25 states was Rs 29.56 trillion. The share of internal taxes or states’ own tax revenue in this was 60.8 per cent. However, the trend was different for many states such as Telangana, which had the highest share of its own tax revenue in total tax collections at 82 per cent.