New Delhi. State Bank of India-Ecorap SBI Ecorap report has raised alarm bells for Delhi, Punjab and Chhattisgarh governments. These states are providing all the free facilities to the people and due to this there is a lot of pressure on their exchequer. Apart from these, the proverb of income eight and spending rupees is being applicable to many other states. In such a situation, the financial condition of the states is getting worse day by day. Due to providing free facilities, the debt of all the states is also increasing day by day. The condition is that these states are spending more than the revenue they are getting.
In Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party government has given the benefit of free electricity and water up to 200 units. Chhattisgarh has recently decided to implement the old pension system. Whereas, the Aam Aadmi Party government, which is sitting in power in Punjab, has announced to provide free electricity up to 300 units and waive off old electricity bills of houses up to 2 kW from December till now. This may worsen the condition of these states. All these states are already under fiscal deficit pressure. That is, the money in their fund remains negligible and they are forced to take loans every year to run the expenses.
According to the report of SBI-Ecorap, Bihar tops the states with fiscal deficit of more than 4 percent of GSDD in the financial year 2021-21. Its fiscal deficit is 11.3%. Whereas, Assam has 8.5 percent, Rajasthan 5.2 percent, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh 4.2 percent and Himachal Pradesh 4.1 percent. According to the report, Telangana is spending 35 per cent of its revenue on free schemes. Many other states spend between 5 and 19 per cent on populist schemes. Talking about spending only the income from tax, then these states spend up to 63 percent of it on free schemes.