Chennai, Jun 16 (PTI) The combined debt of the major power, transport and civil-supplies undertakings stands at approximately Rs 3.18 lakh crore, the Tamil Nadu government said here on Tuesday in a white paper unveiled on state finances.
According to the statistics provided in the document, under the head ‘Contingent liabilities take the true debt position far higher,’ the state authorities said that the outstanding government guarantees rose nearly three-fold, from Rs 65,659 crore at the beginning of April 2021 to Rs 1,79,782 crore by March 2026 (about 5.1 per cent of GSDP, up from 3.7 per cent in 2021).
Furthermore, the white paper said that the combined debt of the major power, transport and civil-supplies undertakings stands at approximately
Rs.3.18 lakh crore.
The power sector entities alone carried Rs 2.47 lakh crore of debt. Further, the power sector entities’ accumulated loss is Rs 1.82 lakh crore.
“Taken together with direct State debt, the aggregate fiscal exposure approaches Rs 13.18 lakh crore, posing a substantial and underappreciated risk that does not appear in the headline debt figure,” it said.
On fiscal deficit, the government said it has remained above the 3 per cent Fiscal Responsibility ceiling in every year of the window, reaching 3.77 per cent (Rs 1,33,208 crore) in 2025-26 (Pre- Actuals) — the highest absolute deficit on record.
The Tamil Nadu Fiscal Responsibility Act, 2003 has been amended repeatedly, with the revenue-deficit elimination target reset successively from 2007-08 to, most recently, 2026-27.
The pattern reveals targets being revised in response to their imminent breach rather than any principled reassessment — transforming a binding constraint into an instrument for retrospective legitimation.
A parallel concern is the persistent gap between Budget Estimates, Revised Estimates and audited actuals, which has been flagged by the CAG as a matter of transparency.
The government said that the white paper’s focus is the five-year post-Covid window from 2021-22 to 2025-26 — the period during which the post-pandemic recovery created the conditions for fiscal consolidation, during which Tamil Nadu’s traditional peers (Karnataka, Maharashtra and Gujarat) used those conditions to restore their fiscal positions, and during which the State’s own indicators moved in the opposite direction.
The Covid-affected year of 2020-21 serves as the baseline, and the document also looks ahead to the immediate challenge of the financial year 2026-27.
“This white paper presents a transparent, evidence-based account of Tamil Nadu’s public finances. It is neither an exercise in retrospective blame nor a political manifesto, but an analytical statement of fiscal fact.” Soon after assuming power, targeting the previous DMK regime, Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay promised a white paper. PTI VGN VGN KH
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