State on high Budget spending mode

| | BHUBANESWAR
  • 0

State on high Budget spending mode

Wednesday, 15 September 2021 | PNS | BHUBANESWAR

With more resources available from the State’s Own Revenue sources, spending by the Government departments has increased and utilisation of the Annual Budget has risen.

While the Department of Finance is keeping a tab on the spending on various sectors, stress is on the expenditures in the sectors like social, infrastructure and other development areas.

While the Annual Budget Estimate is Rs 1,45,350 crore, the total expenditure during the first five months of the year of 2021-22 touched Rs 40,292 crore. This is much more than the corresponding period of previous year, officials pointed out.

While the expenditure as on August 31, 2020 was Rs 33,770 crore, the Government has spent Rs 6,522 crore more during the corresponding period of 2021-22.

The expenditure as on July 31, 2021 was Rs 32,776 crore; and during the month of August more than Rs 7,500 crore was spent.

Notably, the Budget utilisation has gone up to 27.72% as compared to 23.9% during 2020-21. Similarly, programme expenditure during April-August 2021 touched Rs 18,827 crore compared to Rs 14,715 crore spent during the corresponding period previous year.

The Budget utilisation on programme expenditure was 24.43% compared to 19.34% during 2020-21.

The spending by the Departments of Food, Supplies and Consumer Welfare, Cooperation and Disaster Management tops the list of departments, the funds being mostly spent on welfare schemes.

Food security is one of the prime areas of the Government requiring a lot of spending; so, spending by the Food Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department was 43.70%.

The spending in the infrastructure sector was a bit slow due to various reasons, including rainy season. As more funds are provided in this sector, it is expected that the pace of spending would be accelerated.

However, the programme expenditure during the first five months of 2021-22 has gone up compared to the corresponding period of 2020-21.

Now stress is being given for more spending under the CAPEX programme as the level of spending in this sector requires improvement, officials admit.

While continuous monitoring of spending is being done, more field visits are needed to be undertaken by senior officials to boost spending at the field level, opine experts in Government

spending.

Sunday Edition

CAA PASSPORT TO FREEDOM

24 March 2024 | Kumar Chellappan | Agenda

CHENNAI EXPRESS IN GURUGRAM

24 March 2024 | Pawan Soni | Agenda

The Way of Bengal

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

The Pizza Philosopher

24 March 2024 | Shobori Ganguli | Agenda

Astroturf | Lord Shiva calls for all-inclusiveness

24 March 2024 | Bharat Bhushan Padmadeo | Agenda

Interconnected narrative l Forest conservation l Agriculture l Food security

24 March 2024 | BKP Sinha/ Arvind K jha | Agenda