Tripura faces Rs 21,732 cr debt burden: CAG report

According to the CAG report the interest payment liability for loans drawn was Rs 1379.53 crores or Rs 3.83 crores daily in the financial year 2021-2022 which may be matter

BY PINAKI DAS

Tripura’s financial health do not seem to be doing well. The state is reeling under a severe debt burden of Rs 21,732 crores till March 2023, a CAG report tabled in the State Assembly recently said.

According to the CAG report the Tripura government had a total debt liability of Rs 12,902 crores from 1972 to 2018 but the next four years, from 2018 to 2022 during the BJP rule, the debt burden rose by Rs 8,830 crores, raising the total debt burden of the state to Rs 21,732 crores till 31 March 2022.

It is assumed that the state government ran up huge debt burden in the 2022-2023 financial year to meet expenses on 17% additional DA to employees and pensioners and hike in payment of wages to Anganwadi, Asha and MGNREGA workers and more than three times hike in the monthly pension of home guards.

However, according to Jishnu Dev Varma, the former Finance Minister of the state during whose tenure the debt had risen, the opposition is making much noise about nothing by just quoting CAG report without understanding the intricacies.

He added that the present state government is repaying principal and interest on Rs 1450 crore annually as legacy of the previous Left Front government.

In addition there are back to back loans which include 50 years repayment of special assistance loan from Government of India and loan taken for GST shortfall during Covid in the name of state governments but are to be repaid by the central government and it stands at Rs 1045 crores. This amount too is also shown as loan of state government.

Dev Varma added that in addition to that the employees GPF is also showed as loans as they are parked with the state government.

Moreover, the other reasons for the increase in the debt are opening of the Public Ledger accounts in 2018 to bring transparency in fiscal management and as per norm also shown as loans. Again Rs 500 crore loan has been approved from Rural Infrastructure Development Fund ( RIDF) from NABARD at very cheap interest and in addition at present from two there are 14 externally aided projects in the state and 90 per cent of this loan amount is repayable by the government of India.

He on the contrary said that the state government has not even gone for Ways and Means last Financial Year,which is a step many state govts. have followed due to financial crunch but Tripura has been able to manage its finances. There is No Over Draft even after huge increase of social pensions, Covid pandemic and DA payment which reflects that the economy is very well managed in Tripura and that is why the state has been sanctioned loan.

He said that all this talk about loans is misunderstood what maybe called “A Storm in a Tea Cup”.

Opposition CPIM MLA Jitendra Chowdhury put the blame squarely on BJP and said that during the last five years of BJP rule in Tripura the state’s total debt has almost doubled compared to what has been since it became a full state in 1972 till February 2018.

He accused BJP of corruption and added that Tripura’s debt from around Rs 12,000 crore has doubled in five years of the BJP regime but surprisingly there has not been any big noticeable new development project in the state and it is mainly because the fund has been systematically siphoned by a small section of the top leaders of the ruling party.

But the total current debt burden of Tripura will be known from the budget documents scheduled to be placed in the assembly in coming budget session in June this year.

According to the CAG report the interest payment liability for loans drawn was Rs 1379.53 crores or Rs 3.83 crores daily in the financial year 2021-2022 which may be matter of worry for the future.

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