After a gap of two months, the Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday presented the state annual budget for 2020-21, reflecting the priorities of chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy in extending welfare to all sections of people.
State finance minister Buggana Rajendranath Reddy presented the budget with an outlay of Rs 2,29,779 crore, with a moderate hike of only Rs 5,000 crore.
Instead of making huge allocations in the budget and failing to spend the same in the subsequent months, he made judicious allocations to various sectors, which can be implementable.
Reddy allocated Rs 28,237 crore for the weaker sections in the current budget, which is 32 per cent increase in the budget earmarked for them last year, which was Rs 21,317 crore.
While economically backward sections were allocated Rs 5,478 crore, which is an increase of eight percent over the previous year, Kapus were allocated Rs 3,306 crore, Brahmins Rs 359 crore, SC sub-plan Rs 17,403 crore, ST sub-plan Rs 6,131 crore, minorities Rs 3,840 crore, child welfare Rs 16,748 crore and women development Rs 47,283 crore.
Health sector got a substantial allocation of Rs 13,830 crore, agriculture sector was allocated Rs 11,210 crore and education got the maximum of Rs 24,624 crore.
An amount of Rs 5,661 crore was allocated for housing and infrastructure development and Rs 1,000 crore for industrial incentives.
As expected, Jagan’s favourite scheme of extending direct cash transfer to various sections people got the huge priority in the budget.
Some of the major allocations made under the DBT schemes are: Rs 17,000 crore to YSE Pension Kanuka, Rs 3,845 crore to YSR Rythu Bharosa, Rs 2,500 crore to Jagananna Vidya Deevena, Rs 1,802 crore to YSR Fasal Bima Yojana, Rs 1112 crore to Zero Interest loans for DWCRA groups and Rs 500 crore to farmers etc.
While industries and infrastructure development was allocated Rs 3,673 crore, Roads and Buildings got Rs 7,394 crore, Energy sector Rs 6,637 crore, Municipalities and Urban Development Rs 8,727 crore and Irrigation Rs 13,237 crore.