Centre to release additional Monthly devolution amount of Rs 47541 cr to states: Finance Minister

New Delhi [India], November 16 : Centre to release additional monthly devolution amount of Rs 47541 cr to states on November 22, said Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman here on Monday after having the meeting with states Chief Ministers and Finance Ministers of states.
The Finance Minister said, "I have suggested to the finance secretary to release additional Rs 47541 crores with a cumulative monthly devolution amount of Rs 47541 to states on November 22."
"It means other than the amount due of devolution, one more instalment will be given to states. A total of Rs95,082 crores will be given to states," she added.
This is being done in consideration of the desire for states to have money in their hands to help infrastructure creation expenditure, the minister said.
"We have frontloaded many of the dues to states, which has been duly recognized by states. 50-year interest-free capital expenditure money given to states, almost like a grant has been well-received," Sitharaman said.
The context of the meeting held on Monday was to seek states' ideas in pushing growth forward. since, in most of the issues such as investment, development and manufacturing, it is the states that do from the forefront support from the Centre, she said.
GST compensation agreed upon for this entire year has already been given by early November, similarly, some Chief Ministers requested for frontloading of a part of the tax devolution for the current FY in order to increase the states' capital expenditure, added finance Minister.
"There and then, I directed the Finance Secy to do this immediately so that this being a very exceptional year. States will not be short of money in their hands when all of us are pushing forward for the infrastructure expenditure to be taken up by them," Sitharaman said.
She further said, one or two states suggested that surplus land available with public sector undertakings can be considered to be given to states so that they can be used to do some projects such as setting up industrial parks.
"We told states that the list of projects in National Monetization Pipeline has been announced as of now for central government projects, but that the Centre after the second wave of COVID-19 has given incentives to states in performing disinvestment," she added.
11 states have achieved Q1 capital expenditure targets set by Finance Ministry, and have been given permission for additional borrowing; states are firmly moving on capital expenditure and are thereby in a position to borrow more, said Finance Minister.
Finance Secretary TV Somanathan said that between April -September 2021, the capital expenditure of 20 states for which data is available shows a 79 per cent increase over the previous pandemic year 2020-21 and 23 per cent higher than the pre-pandemic year 2019-20.
Clarifying about the excise duty cut on diesel and petrol, Somanathan said "the reduction of Rs 5 in petrol and Rs 10 in diesel has been in the non-sharable portion of excise duty, which means entire loss is borne by central Govt.
There is no loss of devolution to any state govt through a reduction in excise duty, he added.