AAP-led Delhi govt's capital expenditure stagnant over last 4 years
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The AAP government is barely spending 20% of its expenditure on creating assets. A majority of the expenditure — about 80% — is revenue expenditure. A government's expenditure is in two parts — capital expenditure or capex (money a government spends in creating assets like hospitals, bridges, flyovers and roads) and revenue expenditure (money spent on salaries, subsidies and non-asset creating activities like interest payments).
In Delhi's case, capex has remained stagnant since the 2021-22 financial year and if adjusted for inflation, it has actually shown no growth. Sample this, in 2021-22, capex was ₹15,129.28 crore, which barely increased to ₹15,864.41 crore in 2022-23 and then declined to ₹15,488.38 crore in 2023-24. In the current fiscal, the Delhi government had earmarked ₹15,089.25 crore under capex, which was revised to ₹14,912.76 crore. The actual spend till October 2024 was ₹6,074.41 crore only.
The split between capex and revenue expenditure in all budgets is always tilted towards the latter with pensions, salaries and subsidies forming a major chunk under revenue expenditure. However, Delhi has always had a good 60:40 balance of revenue expenditure and capex under Sheila Dikshit's 15 years in power. When AAP came to power in 2015, the subsidy bill had
