The expenditure in priority sectors of State Plan during FY 2015-16 has crossed 60 per cent by end of January last recording an overall growth of around 29.78 per cent over the last fiscal year.
This has been discussed in all Secretary Meeting held under the Chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi on Tuesday wherein Development Commissioner and Additional Chief Secretary Finance Ralakrishnan presented the revenue updates for discussion. In tune with the expenditure, the revenue collection has also shown a growth of around 21 per cent over the last by the end of January.
Complementing the Secretaries of various departments for satisfactory performance in expenditure, Chief Secretary Padhi advised them to keep up the pace of expenditure and avoid the rush of spending in the month of March. The departments were advised to focus on collection of arrear revenue through one time settlement with central PSUs and private sector industries instead of spending time and energy in litigations.
Padhi has further directed the departments to scale up service delivery at ground level. Principal Secretaries and Secretaries have been asked to take up district visit programme regularly as it improves the quality of service delivery and also yields the ground level feedback for policy making.
The Municipal Commissioner, Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Dr Kishan Kumar made a presentation on the Smart City projects. The committee congratulated BMC for coming up as No-1 in all India competition.
Chief Secretary Padhi said, “Achievement of No-1 position has brought us opportunities along with challenges.” The expectation from people and from the investors has now increased and we have to gear up the service delivery mechanism to match the expectations and harness the opportunities. It has been decided to set up one separate drainage division in BMC for bringing management of all drains under one system. The proposals relating to development of urban-eco system, economic growth, traffic management, rapid mass transit system, parking management, beautification of the streets and chhakas, emergency response, disaster mitigation, common payment card etc. in the Smart City were discussed.
The Chief Secretary has advised various departments to extend all necessary support to BMC for expediting the implementation of the planned projects.
Available data show the State Plan expenditure in agriculture and allied sectors up to January 2016 for the current fiscal year has been to the tune of `5,850 crore which is around 61 per cent of the Budget estimate. The expenditure in this sector is 4.49 percent more than that of the last fiscal. The expenditure in infrastructure sector has been `7,749 crore which is 61 per cent of the budget. The last year expenditure in this sector was around 51.28 per cent by this time. The spending in social sector has been `13,186 crore which is 62 per cent of the budget.
The last year expenditure in this sector up end of January was around 55 per cent of the budget estimate. The revenue collection from own tax sources up to January has increased to `17, 081 crore which is 22 per cent more than that of pervious year. Similarly, the revenue from non-tax sources has touched `6,046 crore which is around 18 per cent more than last fiscal year.