Budget spending should be outcome-oriented and lead to improvement in public service delivery, said Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi while inaugurating a workshop on ‘Government Fiscal Management and Budget Analysis’ organised here on Friday.
Padhi advised the officials to ensure rational and qualitative expenditure with real outcomes at the ground level. Focusing on improvement of service delivery, the Chief Secretary said that the Government has notified more than 300 services of different departments under Odisha Public Service Delivery Act and assured the delivery of services within definite time limit. The officers must ensure timely delivery of services to the people, he said.
Speaking on the occasion, Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary, Finance, R Balakrishnan said that plan expenditure cannot be fruitful without improvement in human and societal resources. As such, he added, the plan and non-plan expenditure should go hand in hand for achieving value for the money spent.
Professor Dr Tapas Sen from National Institute of Public Finance and Policy joined the workshop as the principal resource person and trained the officials on various dimensions of public fiscal management in the Government.
Prof Sen said that fiscal policy should be framed as per existing economic conditions. He highlighted the role of fiscal institutions like Ministry of Finance, Department of Finance, Reserve Bank of India, NITI Ayog, Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) etc and the fiscal practices carried through treasury, banking and other channels of fiscal transactions. Focusing on use of IT in fiscal management, Prof Sen said that though different States at present are in various stages of IT adoption, all of them eventually would come to a higher level of IT application in coming years.
MIAF Director Pradipta Kumar Behera gave the welcome address and outlined the objectives of the workshop. The two day workshop’s aim was enhancing the capacity of the Government officials in appropriate budget distribution and expenditure. Around 150 officials from finance service along with the ones dealing with budget and planning participated. Sujata Pati coordinated the workshop.