The grim national economy has prevented the Centre from offering any help to the hill state in the Union Budget earlier this month. Rising demands of the employee organisations for higher scales, regularisation of jobs, removal of pay anomalies, etc, has aggravated his problems in the election year as meeting them will need thousands of crores of rupees.
Major challenges before the Chief Minister are huge debt liabilities, and compulsion of announcing special packages to small and medium industries, creation of jobs, addressing the sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities like petrol and diesel, besides enhancing the allocations in MGNREGA, Health, Education, etc.
The latest report of CAG has made a startling revelation that Himachals debt burden has mounted to Rs 62,212 crore in the financial year 2019-20 as compared to previous year i.e. Rs 53,147 crore. This needs to be addressed in the upcoming budget on urgent basis.
Twin factors, checking fiscal deficit and debt liabilities, make it necessary to increase allocation in capital expenditures which was pegged at Rs 11,701 crore in 2021-22. It was a huge dip of 31.81 per cent as compared to 2020-21 (Rs 17,449) and 3 per cent down from previous year i.e. 2019-20 (Rs 12,333 crore).