Chennai, Feb 23 : The Tamil Nadu government has spent a total of Rs 13,352.85 crore in preventing the spread of Covid-19 pandemic, Deputy Chief Minister O.Panneerselvam said on Tuesday.
He also said the state is expected to log a positive growth rate of 2.02 per cent.
Panneerselvam, who also holds the finance portfolio, stated this while presenting the interim Budget for 2021-22 for the poll-bound state.
Listing out various steps taken to prevent the spread of Covid-19, Panneerselvam said: “On the whole, the government has incurred a total expenditure of Rs 13,352.85 crore on the Covid-19 pandemic response.”
Panneerselvam said the state government has taken all steps for vaccination against Covid-19.
He said 16.70 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccines have been received and 3.85 lakh health care and frontline workers have been administered the vaccine.
The next phase of administering the vaccine to the vulnerable groups of senior citizens and those with co-morbidities will commence very shortly, he said.
Pointing out the provision of Rs 35,000 crore for Covid-19 vaccination programme in the Union Budget for 2021-22, Panneerselvam said the state government expects the central government to continue to bear the full cost of the vaccination programme.
“As on date, 8,48,724 positive cases have been reported in the state with a positivity rate of 4.94 per cent.The weekly positivity rate for the state has now been brought down to below one per cent.8,32,167 patients (98.05 per cent) have recovered and been discharged and 4,091 patients are under treatment.The over all Case Fatality Rate has been brought down to 1.47 per cent, which is significantly less than other states with similar caseload,” he said.
The number of affected persons has stabilised below 500 per day and the positivity rate has come down significantly, he added.
According to Panneerselvam, in order to mitigate the economic impact of the pandemic and also spur economic growth, the Tamil Nadu government acted promptly on the recommendation of the High Level Committee chaired by C.Rangarajan of incurring capital expenditure of at least Rs 10,000 crore additionally in 2020-21.
“Additional sanctions, over and above the provisions made in the Budget Estimates 2020-21, were granted for capital works – irrigation, construction of buildings, roads and highways, housing, water supply and sanitation – amounting to Rs 20,013 crore,” he said.
Panneerselvam said as a result of these measures Tamil Nadu is expected to register a positive growth rate of 2.02 per cent at 2011-12 constant prices in 2020-21.
“This is against an all-India negative growth rate of 7.7 per cent in 2020-21.The strongest performance is of the primary sector at 5.23 per cent,” he said
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