Rs 40K cr pending for TN from Centre: Palanivel Thiaga Rajan

State Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Thursday said that the total pending dues for the state government from the Centre is more than Rs 40,000 crore.

The pre-budget meeting was held at Delhi in which Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and state Finance Ministers participated. In the meeting, Palanivel Thiaga Rajan pointed out the total pending dues of the state government and urged the Union government to pay the dues at the earliest.

“I would like to highlight that in the case of Tamil Nadu, a substantial amount of dues is pending from the Union government. For schemes shared between Centre and states, approximately Rs 17,000 crore of Union government’s share remains to be released. Further, the performance grants from 2017-18 to 2019-20 to the tune of Rs 2,029.22 crore and the basic grant of Rs 548.76 crore for 2019-20 under the 14th Finance Commission are pending. As per the CAG Report of 2016, the Union government has not acted to devolve an amount of Rs 81,647.70 crore between 1996-97 and 2014-15 to the states due to which approximately Rs 4,500 crore which is due to be devolved to Tamil Nadu,” said Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, in the meeting.

He also urged the Union government to release the pending GST compensation of Rs 16,400 crore and to extend the period of GST compensation by at least two years, beyond June 2022.

Thiaga Rajan also said that the increased levy of cesses and surcharges, which do not form part of the divisible pool of taxes, has adversely affected the transfer of resources to the states. “Cesses and surcharges as a proportion of the gross tax revenue of the Centre have almost tripled from 6.26 per cent in 2010-11 to 19.9 per cent in 2020-21 due to which the states are deprived of a share in approximately 20 per cent of the revenue collected by the Centre. If these taxes were added to the divisible pool, the states would have obtained an additional transfer of approximately Rs 1.5 lakh crore as their share from the pool of Central taxes in 2021-22,” he said.