A cursory look at the pattern emerging from allocations of funds under the State’s Supplementary Budgets and the money surrendered at the end of financial years by different departments of the Government is bound to disturb policy and financial planners.
While the State Government is making more provisions for the ‘Supplementary’ demand to accelerate the development process, a lion’s share of these funds is surrendered without any utilisation at the end of a financial year, said sources.Decision makers are worried because when they are making huge allotment of funds, more amounts of the Supplementary Budget provisions are just surrendered. And this has become an ever-growing trend.
During last five years since 2009-10, with some exception of 2013-14, out of the total allocated Supplementary Budget provisions, a whopping Rs 9,235 crore has been surrendered by various departments, said sources.In comparison to Supplementary Budget allocations, more funds were surrendered under the State Plan during 2009-10, 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13.
During 2009-10, the Supplementary Budget provision under State Plan was Rs 1,321 crore whereas Rs 1,391 crore was surrendered by the end of the fiscal.Provision under the Supplementary Grants in 2010-11 was Rs 1,185 crore and the surrendered amount was Rs 1,190 crore. In 2011-12, different departments were favoured with a total of Rs 1,801 crore under the State Plan in Supplementary Budget while the departments surrendered Rs 2,177 crore.
This disturbing trend exposing the spending capacity of the officials was also repeated in 2012-13 when various developmental departments surrendered Rs 2,854 crore against an allocation of Rs 2,677 crore in the Supplementary Budget.However, a break in this pattern was observed in 2013-14 as the surrendered amount was Rs 1,623 crore against the ‘Supplementary’ provision of Rs 2,809 crore.
In fact, over these years, the spending went down in most of the major developmental departments, said sources familiar with financial and policy planning in the State.Notably, in a significant revelation a report of the State Government recently stated that major developmental programmes have suffered due to non-spending of over Rs 6,000 crore of funds stashed in various banks.
Meanwhile, the State Government has hiked the 2014-15 Plan size by jacking it up to Rs 37,661 crore and plans to pump in more money for infrastructure development.Nevertheless, the way the departments are surrendering the State Plan money without spending, it is bound to affect improvement of infrastructure development, pointed out a senior official.