The Comptroller and Auditor General of India raises concerns over Meghalaya’s Rs 4,322 crore investment in public sector enterprises, highlighting minimal financial returns and lack of dividend policies, raising questions on state financial management.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India has raised fresh concerns about Meghalaya’s public sector enterprises, saying the state has locked large sums of public money into entities that are delivering almost no financial return. According to the audit, the government had invested Rs 4,322.52 crore in 11 state public sector enterprises by 2024-25, yet only the Meghalaya State Warehousing Corporation paid back anything in that year, and even that amounted to just Rs 0.06 crore.
The warning matters because the money has been tied up at an average borrowing cost of 5.31 per cent, while dividend and interest income from the wider portfolio came to only Rs 0.20 crore in 2024-25. The Finance Accounts show that total investment in companies, corporations and other bodies reached Rs 4,444.43 crore as of March 31, 2025, up from Rs 3,977.28 crore a year earlier, suggesting that exposure to these enterprises is still rising even as returns remain negligible.
The CAG also criticised the absence of a dividend policy for profitable enterprises. Three state PSUs made profits in 2023-24, but none declared a dividend, and the audit said there is no state rule requiring a minimum payout. Meghalaya has 22 state public sector enterprises in all, including two that are defunct, and the report argues that unviable units need a hard review while profitable ones should be made to return a clearer share of earnings to the treasury.
The findings echo earlier warnings. A CAG report on Meghalaya’s public sector enterprises for the year ended March 31, 2020, had already noted the scale and strain of the portfolio, while Moneycontrol reported in 2017 that 12 of 15 state PSUs had suffered losses of nearly Rs 400 crore. More recently, the CAG has also flagged wider weaknesses in the state’s financial controls, including delayed submission of utilisation certificates worth more than Rs 5,400 crore, underlining the scale of the accountability challenge.
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