Hyderabad: Even as Andhra Pradesh-specific projects and provisions were scaled down, Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu Sunday welcomed the Union Budget as “balanced, forward-looking, Yuva Shakti-driven”. It, he added, advances “inclusive development in the true spirit of Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”.
With 16 Lok Sabha MPs, Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party (TDP) is the NDA’s second-largest ally, forming a crucial pillar of the Modi 3.0 government.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, presenting her ninth Budget in Parliament Sunday, prioritised the poll-bound states—Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal—announcing a slew of projects, while Andhra Pradesh appears to be, for now, on the Centre’s back of mind after enjoying the top slot in 2024.
Despite that, both Naidu and his son, Andhra Pradesh Minister for Information Technology and Human Resources Development Nara Lokesh, hailed the Budget, saying that the state would leverage the overall budget allocations “to accelerate investments, create jobs, and power Andhra Pradesh’s next phase of growth”.
Presenting the first full Budget in July 2024, after the NDA retained power at the Centre with the TDP’s support, Sitharaman, who had taken Andhra Pradesh’s name a few times then, had announced a “special” financial support for the state’s mega, greenfield capital under construction at Amaravati through multilateral development agencies. Promising Rs 15,000 crore in 2024-25, the FM had assured that the Centre would organise amounts in the coming years for the development of AP’s capital, besides financing the early completion of the Polavaram project on Godavari. The FM had also announced funds for water, power, railways, and roads at two industrial nodes on the Visakhapatnam-Chennai and Hyderabad-Bengaluru industrial corridors.
While there had been no specific mention of Andhra Pradesh in her 2025 Budget speech, Sitharaman had prioritised the state’s flagship projects then too, reportedly earmarking Rs 5,936 crore for Polavaram, and allocating Rs 12,157 crore as a balance grant, after accepting the revised estimates sent by the state towards the construction of the multipurpose irrigation project. Additionally, Rs 3,295 crore for the RINL-Visakhapatnam Steel Plant and Rs 730 crore for Vizag Port had also been allocated.
Amaravati and Polavaram might be missing from her speech this time, but Sitharaman in the 2026-27 Budget shifted her focus towards Andhra Pradesh’s ecological and tourism potential, specifically highlighting Araku and Pulikat as key beneficiaries.
Ecologically sustainable mountain trails will be developed in Andhra Pradesh’s Araku Valley in the Eastern Ghats, alongside those in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Jammu and Kashmir, and Podhigai Malai in the Western Ghats. Bird-watching trails will be developed along the Pulikat lake straddling Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, said the FM Sunday.
The only other time that Andhra Pradesh was mentioned in her Budget speech Sunday was when the FM proposed to support the “mineral-rich States of Odisha, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to establish dedicated Rare Earth Corridors to promote mining, processing, research and manufacturing”.
Later, the state’s IT & HRD minister Nara Lokesh thanked Sitharaman for a “well-balanced Union Budget that is firmly aligned with India’s rapid growth and long-term aspirations”. In a post on X Sunday, the TDP scion added that Andhra Pradesh would gain significantly from the overall Budget announcements, mentioning the critical minerals corridor, high-speed rail connectivity, tax incentives for data centres, a stronger push for electronics manufacturing, and renewed focus on tourism.
AP is upbeat with the “environmentally sustainable passenger systems—seven High-Speed Rail corridors proposed between cities as ‘growth connectors’, including Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Bengaluru-Chennai”.
Speaking at an event in his constituency, Kuppam, later, Naidu said the corridors pass through Amaravati, Tirupati, and Chittoor and will benefit the state. “The budget supports our Ease and Speed of Doing Business approach, especially in the sectors we are focused on. It will enable next-gen reforms, support AI, quantum, etc., tech, renewable energies sectors,” the CM said, also appreciating the provisions made for the textile, tourism, and hospitality sectors and describing the potential of Araku and Pulikat to attract tourists.
Naidu mentioned the integrated East Coast Industrial Corridor, as well as inland waterways and regional medical hubs, as further growth enablers for the country and the state. “We will integrate all these initiatives with our policies for swift growth.”
As Andhra Pradesh bets big on data centres, the FM’s announcement of a tax holiday up to 2047 to any foreign company that provides services by procuring data centre services in the country has also cheered up the state leadership. In October, tech giant Google announced a $15 billion strategic investment over five years to establish India’s first Artificial Intelligence hub at Visakhapatnam, with a gigawatt-scale data centre and a robust subsea network.
The FM’s announcements to launch India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) 2.0 to produce equipment and materials, design full-stack Indian Intellectual Property (IP), and fortify supply chains, as well as the proposal to increase the outlay for the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme, launched in April 2025, to Rs 40,000 crore, were also hailed by Naidu.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)