A study on spending on schemes at the district level by Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and Tata Trusts has concluded that fund utilisation in development schemes has improved significantly, but quality of spending not satisfactory yet. Ahead of the annual Budget, both the organisations together hosted “The Budget Trails”, to share and discuss the insights from a two-year long project, which studied fund-flow mechanism at the district level, across 10 development schemes.
The consultation aims to develop a roadmap for fiscal governance reforms that are needed to ensure significant improvement in resource absorption in development schemes, leading to better development outcomes.
This is a first of its kind study that analyses bottlenecks in fund utilisation, at the district level, by placing a District Budget Analyst (DBA) in each of the selected district headquarters.
Prof Abhijit Sen, former Member 14th Finance Commission and Planning Commission , remarked in his keynote address that such discussions need to note there is a general scare of increasing regular public employment. Dr. Poornima Dore, Head of Data Driven Governance at the Tata Trusts was also present.
“The rigorous two year research project, focused on 10 social sector schemes (SSA, MDM, NHM, ICDS, SBM, NRDWP, MGNREGS, NSAP, PMAY, PMFBY and RKVY) in five districts of Balasore and Bolangir in Odisha, Chandrapur in Maharashtra, East Singhbhum in Jharkhand, and Krishna in Andhra Pradesh. For these schemes, the districts have reported better utilisation of funds available; with over 85 per cent fund utilisation reported for the financial years 2017-18 and 2018-19.