In a memorandum handed over to the 16th Finance Commission, the Tamil Nadu government has mentioned that the investment needs of the State stood at ₹6.84 lakh crore. Besides, infrastructure needs in urban areas were to the tune of ₹5.32 lakh crore.
The funding requirement in power sector was ₹62,000 crore and the investment needs for industrialisation was ₹43,600 crore. For modernisation of buses and public transport systems, ₹7,000 crore were needed. For nurturing the blue economy, support for secondary and tertiary healthcare and restoration of waterbodies ₹5,000 crore each was mentioned.
The government also mentioned ₹1,200 crore each for conservation and restoration of heritage structures and the development of tourism sector, ₹1,000 crore each for development of sports and grants for e-governance initiatives and ₹500 crore for grants for improving accessibility of differently-abled persons.
As for vertical devolution, Tamil Nadu was for including all non-tax revenues in the divisible pool of taxes via a Constitutional amendment or, alternatively, increase the States’ share in the divisible pool to compensate for this loss. As for horizontal devolution, the State was for reducing the weightage given to income distance, area and forest & ecology criteria while increasing the weightage given to demographic performance.
Under disaster risk management, the government wanted the FC to increase the SDRMF corpus by 50% for 2026–27, with 90:10 funding pattern from GoI and States and implement an annual 10% increment in the fund size during the award period, replacing the current 5%. It wanted to replace the Disaster Risk Index with a new index incorporating parameters like coastline length and urbanization.
It recommended earmarked allocations for addressing urban flooding (₹2,500 crore), drought (₹2,000 crore), and coastal management (₹1,000 crore). It suggested increase in grants to local bodies to at least 5% of the divisible pool and sought allocation of grants in a 50:50 ratio between rural and urban local bodies.
It was also for calculating the inter-se share of States based on urban and rural population shares relative to the national average and for allowing States to determine inter-se distribution among local bodies based on recommendations of the State Finance Commission.
Published - November 18, 2024 09:23 pm IST
