States with fiscal space can go for farm loan waivers, says Arun Jaitley

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has said the states were free to announce farm loan waivers if they had the fiscal space, but remained non-committal on the question of a national farm loan waiver scheme as the Centre was facing a tight fiscal deficit situation. In an interview with Business Standard's A K Bhattacharya for the News Services Division of All India Radio, Jaitley also said there would be no shortfall this year in disinvestment and non-tax revenues. He expressed concern over the latest revenue numbers, which showed that the service tax component of the goods and services tax (GST) hadn't