Ajit Pawar
NAGPUR: Painting a grim picture of the state’s financial condition, deputy CM and finance minister Ajit Pawar on Sunday said the revenue shortfall in 2020-21 may go up to Rs1 lakh crore.
Addressing a ‘Meet the Press’ at Nagpur Patrakar Club, he said, “The revenue shortfall at present is Rs75,000 crore. If we don’t get expected amount of revenue from state sources and if the Centre does not give our full share of taxes, then the deficit may go up to Rs 1 lakh crore.”
He said that the Centre’s payment of the state’s share of taxes was short by Rs 25,000 crore. “In spite of the financial condition, we have not reduced allocation to departments like public health, home etc,” said Pawar.
Nagpur: Western Coalfields Ltd (WCL) is seeing prospects of generating methanol through surface coal gasification from one of its mines at Chandrapur. Methanol can be used as an alternative fuel.
Though long way from commercial production, pre-feasibility report has indicated possibility of producing methanol through gasification of coal from the mine, said WCL’s chairman-cum-managing director (CMD), R R Mishra. WCL is a city-headquartered subsidiary of Coal India Ltd (CIL).
He was talking to newspersons at a ‘meet the press’ programme organized by Nagpur Patrakar Club. Mishra is due for retirement on December 31. The present director (technical) of the company Manoj Kumar will be taking over as new CMD.