The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has come down heavily on the Odisha Government for its failure to monitor huge funds meant for different flagship schemes and for not having uniform accounting or discipline in accounting procedure.
The report further revealed that the State Government’s compliance with various rules, procedures and directives relating to the utilisation of funds were unsatisfactory. It was evident from delays in furnishing Utilisation Certificates (UCs) against the grants from various grantee institutions and issue of inaccurate UCs, the report observed.
Besides, cases of misappropriation, losses and defalcations were pending for settlement for long in many of the departments of State Government despite the same being pointed out regularly in earlier audit reports, the CAG revealed.
“There is no single agency monitoring the use of these funds and no data is readily available on the amounts spent in any particular year on major flagship and other important schemes,” the report on the Annual Accounts of the State Government for the financial year ending March 2013 released by the CAG office on Monday stated.
The report also said the Union Government transfers substantial amounts of grants-in-aid to various State Implementing Agencies for execution of different schemes, but there is no monitoring mechanism on the spending of these funds.
“On the other hand, lack of uniform accounting practices, proper documentation and timely reporting of expenditure by all these agencies made it quite difficult to monitor the end use of these direct transfers,” the report said.
“The State Government has to put in place an appropriate mechanism to ensure proper accounting of these funds,” the report suggested.
Besides, inadequate utilisation of funds due to non-implementation of the schemes has also led to lesser requirement of funds and resulted in an increase in the overall savings to the tune of Rs 9,335.72 crore, which has remained idle. This included huge savings of Rs 5,358.49 crore in six cases under heads of five grants and one appropriation exceeding Rs 100 crore in each case.
“There were instances of savings exceeding Rs 10 crore in 19 cases relating to 16 grants and one appropriation during 2008-13,” the CAG report revealed.
In addition, excess expenditure and expenditure without provision of funds, unnecessary/excessive supplementary provision, substantial surrenders, non-surrender of anticipated savings during the current year and rush of expenditure during the last month of the financial year has been qualified in the CAG report for the year 2012-13.