Bhagwant Mann shares debt detail with governor, seeks five years debt repayment moratorium
₹5,637.40 crore, with the Centre. In his reply, the governor had sought details from the Mann dispensation about the utilisation of the ₹50,000 crore the state government had borrowed so that he could “convince the prime minister that the money was properly utilised".
Mann in his letter said the Aam Aadmi Party government in the state had borrowed just over ₹47,107.6 crore-- which includes not only market loans but also loans from NABARD--in its 18-month tenure and spent ₹48,530 crore. Sharing the data on the funds spent out of the borrowings, the Mann government said it borrowed ₹32,447 crore in 2022-23 and ₹14,660 crore from April to August in this financial year.
“A mammoth amount of ₹27,016 crore went into interest repayment on the debt which your government inherited." The Punjab chief minister said that during his tenure, “lingering issues left behind by previous governments" were dealt on priority. “We used both debt and our own revenue resources to fund organizations/schemes ignored by my predecessors, utilized the new debt to create capital assets and undertake development activities in the State," Mann letter read.
Mann wrote his government spent ₹350 crore to bailout to PUNSUP, ₹798 crore to bail out Punjab’s Cooperative Bank, ₹845 crore on repayment of loan against Rural Development Fund, ₹2,556 crore on Power subsidy arrears, ₹4,000 crore on sinking fund, ₹1,008 crore on arrears of sugarcane farmers, ₹1,750 crore on unpaid central sponsored schemes, ₹10,208 crore spent on development as capital expenditure and ₹27,026 crore on interest payment. As per the data shared given by Mann, his government recorded an increase in the revenue collection.
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