PANAJI
The State government's spending on public welfare and physical development work has been steadily decreasing each year with the spend on its over 60,000-strong employee force and debt repayment accounting for nearly half its total spend.
The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) for 2021-22 reveals that nearly 36 per cent of the government's total expenditure was spent on staff salaries and pension payments. Also another 13 per cent went to pay back past loans and interest on them, thus aggregating nearly 50 per-cent of the State government's total expenditure that year.
As per the CAG report, the spend on staff salaries and pension, besides repayment of loans and interest has been steadily increasing since 2016-17.
Staff salaries cost the State government Rs 3,293.65 crore in 2021-22, around Rs 334 crore more than what it spent on salaries the previous 2020-21 year. Back in 2017-18, the staff burden on the exchequer was Rs 2,827.20 crores.
It dropped marginally in 2018-19 to Rs 2,798.54 crores but again rose by about Rs 136-odd crore to 2,935.36 crores in 2019-20.
The State's debt burden is also steadily increasing, the CAG said in the report.
Back in 2017-18, the State spent Rs 1,244.28 crores on repayment of loans and interest. Debt servicing cost of the government rose by over Rs 100 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 1,344.45 crore.
A year later in 2019-20 it shot up by Rs 121 crore to Rs 1,465.09 crores and by another Rs 125 crore to Rs 1,590.37 crore in 2020-21. Pension payments have also similarly increased steadily in these years.
In terms of percentage, 48.67 percent of the expenditure was spent on salary, pension and interest in 2018-19.
This salaries-pension-loan outgo as a percentage of total expenditure rose to 49.17 percent in 2019-2020 and again marginally higher to 49.30 percent in 2020-21.
The State government resorting to high borrowings has been a source of constant worry and the CAG too has flagged the State's burgeoning net debt widely surpassed the 25% of GSDP limit set by the FRBM law.
