The West Bengal government, which is reeling under a financial crunch and facing debt, is planning to sell its securities to collect Rs 2,000 crore.
Finance secretary of the government of West Bengal H.K. Dwivedi said in a statement that the sale will be made through the Reserve Bank of India at its Mumbai office on August 8, 2017.
The state government has already obtained permission from the Centre in this regard.
Before the auction of securities, the government has already collected more than Rs 1.5 lakh crore from the market.
The total debt today stands at around Rs 3.5 lakh crore. West Bengal finance minister had already mentioned in his budget speech that the state is facing debt.
The present borrowing, government insiders say, was necessitated due to approval of the pay commission for the government staffers. Also, the government would like to carry out more rural development work before the panchyat elections in 2018.
“Due to floods, roads in rural part of the state have been washed away. We would require to do massive expenditure to rebuild them,”said a minister.
Touring North Bengal, Mamata Banerjee on Thursday criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not assisting the West Bengal government.
But Rahul Sinha, national secretary of the BJP, said, “The chief minister did not raise the issue when she met prime minister a couple of weeks back when she attended the President’s oath taking ceremony. She also did not raise the issue while meeting Home Minister Rajnath Singh. All she is doing is lip service.”
Dwivedi said, “The objective of the loan would be to utilize it to meet the requirements of the development expenditure of the state. The stock will be of ten years tenure.”
The loan will be repaid on August 9, 2027.
