New Delhi : Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday said the resources of the states have considerably increased after the 14th Finance Commission, and the Centre expects that the states will spend further on infrastructure creation and anti-poverty programmes.
“Most of the states have suggested that they have been concentrating on the anti-poverty programme, and particularly their concentration is on the Agricultural Sector. We also expect that the states, whose resources after the 14th Finance Commission have been increased, will spend further on infrastructure creation and on ant-poverty programmes; and to the extent that the Centre could assist them, we will continue to that, said Jaitley while interacting with reporters after a meeting with Finance Ministers from States and Union Territories here.
“Today, the Finance Ministers of all states were represented in a meeting that we called on the eve of the Union budget to ask for their suggestions. The states, of course, have discussed their own resources, and each one of them is now competing for higher resources and higher investments,” said the minister.
“We are all geared up to fight this global environment of global slowdown so that India remains an economy which is on the move,” he added. (ANI)