Revanth Reddy seeks Centre’s nod for loans to build schools

TElangana chief authorities minister A Revanth Reddy on tues requested the Centre to let his government to mobilise monetary resource through loans for the construction of Young India integrated residential schools in all the assembly constituencies in the state and exempt these loans from the FRBM (fiscal responsibility and budgetary management) limit.Revanth Reddy met Union finance minister Nirmala Sitaraman in New Delhi and explained to her the initiatives taken by his government to strengthen the education sector, an official statement from the chief minister’s office (CMO) said.He brought to the notice of Sitaraman that the state government was constructing 105 Young India integrated residential schools in 105 assembly constituencies across Telangana. He said these measures were initiated to provide corporate-style education to the BC, SC, ST and minority sections who constituted about 90% of the population in the state.“The construction work of the four schools has already started and tenders for the remaining schools have been finalized. Each school will accommodate 2,560 students and in all, 2.70 lakh students will get the opportunity to study in all schools in the state,” he said.The chief minister briefed the union finance minister about the requirement of the funds to construct these schools with the state-of-the-art facilities including labs, sport stadium etc. “The total cost of the construction of the schools will be ₹21,000 crore, of which ₹9,000 crore will be spent on providing modern labs and other infrastructure in junior, degree, technical colleges and other higher educational institutions,” he said.In order to meet the financial requirement for the construction of the residential schools, Revanth Reddy appealed to Sitharaman to permit the state government to constitute a special corporation to mobilize funds through borrowing.He wanted that these loans be exempt from the FRBM limit fixed by the Centre for the states for going in for market borrowings. He told Sitaraman that the state government was spending huge funds on the education sector, considering it as an investment.The chief minister also requested the union minister to allow restructuring of the loans as the previous government had arbitrarily borrowed loans at high-interest rates and repayment of loans had become a huge burden on the state government.“The union minister responded positively to the chief minister’s requests,” the official statement said.