Shillong, Oct 25: Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma admitted challenges faced by the state government, but ruled out fund crunch in the state.

“Financial challenges are always there, but it is not that we are completely facing financial crunch,” Sangma told reporters on Friday.

He said that from the current position of the state, there has been committed liabilities and expenditures.

“The government has been very clear from day one that those committed liabilities and expenditures will be paid. There is no question of any kind of difficulties in meeting those committed liabilities and expenditures,” he said.

The chief minister however said that the past five-six years have been very tough for the state government due to issues which led to the 14th Finance Commission reducing the revenue gap grant as well as the ban on coal mining imposed by the NGT.

Conrad said that implementation of the Fifth Pay Commission also caused the state government additional burden.

“Inspite of that, the state government has ensured that committed liabilities specially when it comes to salaries of employees, pensions, interest payment made with banks, basic infrastructural expenditures, all of these are being taken care of,” he maintained.

Sangma also pointed out commitments made in the past years and lots of sanctions being made beyond the bank of sanction.

“These things have happened in the past, which has ultimately led to all financial burden lining up in past 10 years and leading to large increase in payment to contractors and other infrastructural projects. Those are areas which we need to balance out. Overall, the state government do face financial difficulties, but we will ensure our committed liabilities are met,” he said.

Meanwhile, the chief minister said that his government has ensured that the state’s own revenue see a jump of almost 17 percent in the last one year since it took over. “Not only that we have a target of ensuring that we jump up by another 30 percent in this financial year,” he stated.