Aiming to stress more on implementation part and to keep a tab on fiscal health of the State, the Government has decided to ‘go slow’ in presenting its annual estimate for the year 2018-19.
It is learnt that unlike the jump of around Rs 12,171 crore or 19.17 per cent over and above of the previous year’s estimate presented last year, the size of this year Budget is going to be around Rs 82,000 crore. Total size of the 2017-18 Budget was Rs 75,673.42 crore.
Highly placed sources on Monday informing this to The Pioneer, a day before the most important annual exercise is going to take place on January 23 in the Assembly, said that the focus this time is not to expand much.
“The Budget would see an addition of nearly Rs 7,000 crore that would take its total size to Rs 82,000 crore approximately. Implementation part is going to be our top focus.
The Government has already started sufficient number of schemes of different natures which need to be taken forward,” said a top official requesting anonymity about the highly confidential exercise.
However, the Government is up against its growing establishment expenditure since host of recruitment have taken place in different departments. At the same time, the Government is not sure about its revenue collection which has seen a downward trend in recent times. By merging the plan and non-plan heads into one, the Budget paper calculates costs coming on salaries, allowances, maintenance cost, fuel cost etc under establishment expenditure.
like last time, there is a provision of separate Budgets for women and agriculture as ‘Gender Budget’ and ‘Agriculture Budget’ accumulating the schemes spending over 30 per cent in the specific areas. “This feature would remain but the separate Budgets would not be read out specifically during the main Budget speech and would be later discussed during the debates,” said he.
Ahead of the annual Budget, the Assembly on Tuesday would also see the Economic Survey for 2017-18 of the State getting placed that which generally comes a day before. “There is no such Constitutional provision that the Economic Survey would be presented a day before the Budget. The Survey this time suggests that financial health of the State is sound and there is nothing alarming about it,” said the official.
Also, the document is going to have district wise details of the schemes and expenditures done along with the assets and services created out of those. Chief Minister Raghubar Das would also lay the Action Taken Report about the announcements made in 2017-18 Budget.
Directions to incorporate recommendations of the 14th Finance Commission about the State Disaster Relief Fund, Rural and Urban Development Departments have been given to the Finance Department ahead of the preparatory exercise. “We also have clear direction from the NITI Ayog to map all funds with the specific schemes getting any kind assistance from the Centre,” added an official.