In the first 15 months since the TRS government came to power in June 2014, the Telangana government borrowed a whopping Rs 51,000 crore for various funding agencies, a RTI query has revealed.
According to The Times of India, the government is looking for an additional Rs 10,000 crore in loans from agencies such as the World Bank for various infrastructure projects.
The RTI was filed by the Forum for Good Governance.
The TOI report states, "Releasing the data it received in reply to its RTI request, the Forum said that the Rs 51,000 crore loans in the pipeline, part of which have been availed, were in addition to Telangana's share of the Rs 1.8 lakh crore outstanding loans of the united Andhra Pradesh government, whose final division between the successor Telangana and Andhra Pradesh governments is yet to be finalized."
“The government has so far, obtained Rs 23,000 crore from sale of bonds at 9% interest, got a loan of Rs 24,000 crore from the Rural Electrification Corporation at 11% interest, and Rs 4000 crore from the Power Finance Corporation,” added the report.
M Padmanabha Reddy, the forum secretary, told the paper, "We are not against borrowing loans for development works but wasting the state finances on unproductive expenditure and going for loans for developmental works is not justified the government must take people into confidence on its plans for repaying the loans and how it plans to pay the annual interest on the loans."