Chandigarh: Public debt in Punjab is burgeoning and landed the state in a soup. Realising this, Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has now ordered an inquiry into how and where the monies have been spent. Mann said successive governments have left the state with a debt of £30 billion. “We will inquire as to where the money was spent and will order recovery into where this money was spent. This was the public money,” he said.
Inquiries revealed that between April 2021 and February 2022, the previous government had already borrowed £1.94 billion. If added to the previous years’ debt of £24.8 billion, the debt would be £26.7 billion.
The government is also learnt to have borrowed from the market and raised state development loans in March, which would lead to the state’s debt zooming to over £27.3 billion, excluding the loans received in lieu of GST compensation. Over 21 per cent of the state’s annual revenue receipts in 2021-22 have gone in just repayment of the outstanding loan and another 36.9 per cent into payment of salaries and pensions. A look at the past fiscal reveals that the state is borrowing double of what it uses as money to repay interests on loan.
