Flags rising burden of State’s loan repayment
PANAJI
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its ‘State Finances Audit Report’ for the 2022-23 fiscal, has cautioned the State government on the burgeoning debt and pointed out that the crucial ratio of debt to the State’s Gross Domestic Product (GSDP) had breached the prescribed 25% in all the 2018-23 years.
The report notes that the Goa Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (GFRBM) Act had stipulated that this debt to GSDP ratio had to be brought down under 25% from 2015 which the State has failed to do.
On March 31, 2023, however, Goa’s debt to GSDP ratio was more than six percentage points higher than this benchmark (31.3%) although it was much higher at the end of the preceding fiscal at 33%.
Another issue of concern flagged by the CAG in the report was the rising burden of the State’s repayments of the loans.
It pointed out that in 2022-23, what the State paid up for servicing its loans added up to 48% of the total funds it received as loans in that year. In the preceding year (2021-22) this ratio was only 28%.
In simple parlance what this means is that the government paid almost half the money it borrowed in 2022-23 to pay back principal and interest of past accumulated loans.
Amidst the gloomy picture of the State’s management of its public debt, the CAG however had some positive comments on how the State manages its finances pointing out that the Goa government had vastly improved its tax mop-ups by surpassing its own tax revenue estimates and at the same time curtailing revenue expenditure by almost 12 per cent of the estimates in the 2022-23 annual budget.
This helped the State achieve a revenue surplus of a whopping Rs 2,231 crore in 2022-23, vastly higher than the Rs 434 crore it had pledged to achieve in the budget.
Depts spent sans budgetary provision
PANAJI: The CAG pointed out that during 2022-23, some of the State government departments spent money to the tune of Rs 14.02 crore without any budgetary provision under the capital account without authority of law.
Jails, Public Works, Water Supply and Sanitation, Scheduled Tribe Development Scheme, Art and Culture, Education and Sports were listed as the departments which carried out this unauthorised expenditure. In the previous 2021-22 fiscal the unauthorised expenditure was just Rs 4.68 crore.
“State Government may ensure that no expenditure is incurred without budgetary provision by any DDO and necessary controls are exercised in the Directorate of Accounts,” the CAG has recommended.
