SHILLONG, Dec 12: At a time when the state is reeling under financial adversity, the Union Finance Ministry has alleviated the COVID-triggered woe by announcing Rs 200 crore for Meghalaya as part of ‘Special Assistance to States for Capital Expenditure’.
A statement from the Finance Ministry on Saturday said that the states, barring Tamil Nadu, have availed benefits of the newly-announced scheme for ‘Special Assistance to States for Capital Expenditure’, which was announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman as a part of the AatmaNirbhar Bharat package on October 12.
The scheme has three parts.
Part-I of the scheme covers the North East. Under this part, Rs 200 crore has been allocated to Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura.
However, due to high population and geographical area, Assam has been allocated Rs 450 crore.
The second part includes states barring the ones in Part I, under which over Rs 7,500 crore has been earmarked.
The amount has been allocated among these states in proportion to their share of central tax as per the interim award of the 15th Finance Commission for 2020-21.
Part-III of the scheme is aimed at pushing various citizen-centric reforms in the states. Under this part, an amount of Rs 2,000 crore is earmarked. This amount will be available only to those states that carry out at least 3 out of the 4 reforms specified by the Finance Ministry in its letter dated May 17, 2020, regarding reform linked additional borrowing permissions.
For Meghalaya, an amount of Rs 200 has been allocated and approved out of which, an amount of Rs 100 crore has been released.
The scheme is aimed at boosting capital expenditure by the state governments who are subjected to financial hardships due to the shortfall in tax revenue arising out of the COVID-19 pandemic.
It may be mentioned that the scheme has got very warm response from the state governments.
So far, capital expenditure proposals of Rs 9,879.61 crore of 27 states have been approved by the Ministry of Finance. An amount of Rs 4,939.81 crore has already been doled out to the states as the first instalment under the scheme.
The capital expenditure projects have been approved in diverse sectors of economy like health, rural development, water supply, irrigation, power, transport, education and urban development.