Finance minister K.N. Balagopal on Friday said Kerala’s public debt is showing a decreasing trend. He described as “propaganda” the charge that the State had fallen into a huge debt trap.
Kerala’s total public debt has now dipped to 33% of the Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) from 39% three years ago. During the same period, the total debt of the Union government had risen from 52% to 56% of the Gross Domestic product (GDP).
Mr. Balagopal was inaugurating a seminar on Union Budget 2024-25 and the Economic Survey jointly organised by Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation (GIFT), the Thiruvananthapuram chapter of Kerala Economic Association (KEA), and the departments of Economics, Political Science and Commerce of the University of Kerala.
Both the Union Budget and the Economic Survey falsely project a rosy picture of the economy, according to Mr. Balagopal. Unemployment, inflation and price rise reveal an increasing trend. The robust growth claimed by the Survey and the Budget is reflected neither in the income nor the purchasing power of the people, he said.
The Union Budget lacks projects to solve the unemployment problem in the long run, said leading economist M.A. Oommen said, according to a statement issued by GIFT. Rising unemployment is a structural issue of the Indian economy, which should be addressed very seriously.
Pronab Sen, country director, International Growth Centre (IGC) said that though India requires 80 million job opportunities, the latest Budget envisions only 2 million opportunities through all its proposals. The Indian economy is stagnant at present in creating new job opportunities, he said.
C. Veeramani, director, Centre for Development Studies (CDS), said India’s export sector is still lagging behind, contributing less than two per cent of the global trade. It is unfortunate that there were no proposals in the Budget to boost exports. The government should reduce the import duty of intermediary products to promote exports, he said.
Former Planning Board member G . Vijayaraghavan urged Kerala to take advantage of the Budget proposals instead of resorting to political criticism. He also suggested that the Land Reforms Act be modified in order to promote entrepreneurship in agriculture.
State Planning Board member Ravi Raman chaired a round table which saw participation by leading economists. GIFT director K.J. Joseph, and Assistant Professor Kirankumar Kakkarlapudi also were present.
