Budget: Focus to strengthen growth pillars of Gurugram

Gurugram: The economic prosperity of Haryana can be gauged from the fact that despite being only two percent of the country's landmass, four percent of the nation's GDP has been contributed by the state.

Moreover, the per capita income of the state for 2019-20 is pegged at Rs 2.64 lakhs per annum. While a Haryanvi on a monthly basis earns Rs 20,000, a resident in its richest city Gurugram earns over Rs 33,000 per month.

On Friday when Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar presented Rs 1.42 lakh crores budget, the major emphasis was to ensure that the growth pillars for prosperous Gurugram and Haryana remain strong amid challenges of rising debt.

For Gurugram, the budget emphasised on the growth of service and tertiary industries, the rising amount of external development charges (EDC) by the builders, harnessing groundwater reserves, digitalisation, employment generation and improving the education systems.

Acknowledging the the leadership role of Gurugram in ensuring Haryana having total exports of Rs 98,000 crores in the financial year 2019-20, there was focus on easing the process of setting up industrial units in the city. There was also an emphasis on the growth of pharmaceutical industries.

Understanding that generation of employment was one of the major criterias, target of creating 25,000 jobs in the private sector mostly in Gurugram was discussed.

For this purpose, the state government will create a job portal and will coordinate with the private companies for providing employment to the registered members with requisite skills. There was also an announcement of opening startup hubs in the villages.

Accepting the fact that rising amounts of EDC by the builders was a challenge, the Chief Minister urged the builders to come into Central government's recently proposed scheme of "Vivaad se Vishwas "scheme". With over Rs 10,000 crores pending dues only in Gurugram, the Chief Minister urged the builders to pay the required amounts.

It seemed that the education model which Delhi voters considered a major factor electing the AAP government again, caused the Haryana government to spend the largest amount of its budget on education.

Among the large amounts of spending that were incurred in the improvement of government educational institutions, for Gurugram there was an announcement of setting up the institute of emerging technology. The new institute will focus on new technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and 3-D printing. For harnessing the groundwater reserves, the emphasis was on building the Mewat canal that will improve the water supply.

For the first time, the budget was presented to the members in the paperless format through a tab, a feat that has also not been carried out so far even in the Indian Parliament.