Punjab continues to be in doldrums. Just a day before the State Government is all set to present its budget for the financial year 2013-14, the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India on State Finances for 2011-12, tabled in the Punjab Vidhan Sabha on Tuesday, presented a sorry state of affairs, as far as State’s financial position is concerned.
The revenue receipts have decreased, non-tax revenue too witnessed a dip, average return on Government’s investments in statutory corporations, joint stock companies, cooperative societies was almost negligible, around one-forth of the revenue receipts were used to meet interest payment burden — representing the contrary picture of what the State Government has all along been claiming of being a “sound” economy.
The revenue receipts have been reduced by 4.98 per cent and non-tax revenue decreased by 73.76 per cent.
The CAG, providing an insight into the trends in receipts and expenditure, committed expenditure, balancing pattern, fiscal imbalances among other things, maintained that the State could not contain its revenue deficit as per targets fixed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management (FRBM) Act, despite it being among the earliest States to have passed it in 2003.
The CAG remarked that the revenue deficit has been shooting “each passing year”.
The CAG pointed out that during the current year, the capital expenditure decreased by 33 per cent, and efforts should be made “to check the tendency of meeting revenue expenditure out of borrowed funds”.
Alleging oversight of funds transferred directly from Centre to the state implementing agencies outside the state budget, CAG found out that there is “no single agency” to monitor these funds.
Besides, there is no readily available data to ascertain how much is actually spent in any particular year on these schemes or programmes.
12 PSUs INCURRED lOSS OF Rs1568.83 CRORE
Out of 31 working public sector undertakings (PSUs) — including 27 companies and four statutory corporations, as many as 12 PSUs incurred loss of Rs1568.83 crores during 2011-12. PSUs incurring “heavy losses” are Punjab State Electricity Board, suffering loss of Rs1301.52 crores, Punjab State Warehousing Corporation losing Rs122.28 crores, and Punjab State Grains Procurement Corporation limited obtaining loss of Rs85.60 crores.
CAG attributed the losses mainly to the deficiencies in financial management, planning, implementation of project, running their operations and monitoring.
CAG added that 14 PSUs have earned meager profit of Rs58.67 crores, while three working PSUs prepared their accounts on “no profit no loss” basis, and two of them have not started commercial activities.
The central audit authority stated that a review of three years audit report (2009-10 to 2011-12) shows that the state PSUs losses of Rs4923 crore and infructuous investments of Rs14.52 crores were controllable with better management.
lOOPHOlES IN PSTCl’S WORKING
CAG has also pointed out loopholes in the working of the Punjab State Transmission Corporation limited (PSTCl) — responsible to manage the transmission of electricity and grid operations.
CAG pointed that the PSTCl failed to achieve the planned additions, augmentations, upgradations of the transmission system in all the years during review period and the planned work spilled over from one year to another.
On the project management, CAG stated that due to deficiencies in planning and scheduling, the work of construction of substations and transmission lines got delayed, resulting in around Rs40 crores.
It added that the company failed to add adequate transmission capacity to cater to total connected load in the State.
As of March 31, 2012, Company’s transmission capacity was 21,250 MV against connected load of 32, 470 MVA.