Govt open to taking more measures to boost growth

New Delhi: The Centre has accommodated all concerns of the state governments on the issue of borrowing to meet deficit in goods and services tax compensation cess fund, minister of state for finance Anurag Thakur has said. Thakur told ET that the Centre expects states to emulate the leave travel concession (LTC) and festival advance schemes for their employees. He also said the government is open to undertaking more measures to boost the economy. “We have accommodated states’ concerns to the best of our ability and have facilitated states' borrowing (for compnsation cess shortfall),” Thakur said, adding that this clearly demonstrated the Centre’s firm belief in cooperative federalism.

Thakur’s statement came a day after the Centre agreed to borrow Rs 1.1 lakh crore under the option 1offered to states and on-lend to them in lieu of compensation cess shortfall. The Centre had on August 28 offered two options to states to address the deficit in the compensation cess fund because of the Covid-19 induced slowdown. Under the first option, states were to borrow a total of Rs 97,000 crore, which was subsequently raised to Rs 1.1 lakh crore, to meet that portion of deficit attributed to rollout of the goods and services tax (GST). States had been insisting that the Centre carry out the borrowing and compensate them.