Working on its commitment given to the Centre and Niti Ayog for maintaining financial discipline in the State, the Government has presented its future plans for Budget preparation and expenditure well in advance. The Finance Department in this regard issued two documents on Wednesday. Principal Secretary, Finance, Amit Khare, while releasing the papers, said that these were aimed to improve the Plan expenditure and for the preparation of full budget for the year 2016-17. The order puts timeline between April 1 to September 30 for completion of 50 per cent of the Plan budget expenditure, while the rest half would be spent by March 31.
Though it has also been regulated that expenditure in the month of March cannot be over 15 per cent of the budgetary provisions without prior approval of the Department. This apart, 100 per cent sanction order of the Plan budget has to be generated by June 30, 2015 for this year. The Finance Secretary also said that positive outcomes had come after the review of all the departments by Chief Minister Raghubar Das. By the month of May, Rs 2378.47 crore has been spent from Non-plan fund while in Plan fund the amount has reached Rs 2147.02 crore. The figure is 8.16 per cent of 2015-16 annual budget while in the respective year in 2014-15 it was just 4.56 per cent.